Across the Pond

Pond life is small-scale and even a dragon fly can cross mine in a matter of seconds.  Change is happening as winter begins to rear its frosty head.  The frogs have disappeared to the boggy bottom.  The enormous goldfish swim far below the surface.  Only the young reckless minnows cruise near the top, much like teenagers showing off their wheels. 

sky reflected in the pond

netting over the pond

One of the joys of pond management is keeping the leaves and pine needles out.  I corral the leaves, in October and November, with a canopy of netting.  Many of the pine needles fall through, but the leaves are mostly apprehended.  Already the water is amber from the escapees. 

elephant ear beside the pond

One particularly heavy pine needle dropping season, I forgot to install the netting and poisoned the water and killed all of the fish.  Goldfish are pretty hard to kill (and why they make good first pets for the youngest generation).  Left alone, they can live for many years in a pond that has reasonably clean water and plants. There is no filter in my pond; the pump circulates water but the rain does the replenishing.

minnow in net

Today I used the skimmer to get some of the floating pine needles out.  In the process, I dipped out a few of those crazy teen minnows that were cruising the top of the pond, daring any invader to catch them.  Some of them lay perfectly still in the net and were very hard to see except when the sunlight hit their shiny little bodies.  I think I got them all; at least I know I got the ones that wriggled.  A warning to fish out of water - wriggle if you want to be noticed!

Good advice for people
If you need attention or if you feel like you don't fit in, wriggle a little bit so your friends recognize you - you don't want to get thrown out with the pond refuse! 

Bullfrog tadpoles are waiting out the winter in the leafy bottom.  This good news means that some of the bullfrogs in the pond are in fact girls.  I recognize the boys because they make all the noise; bullfrogs are otherwise difficult to tell apart (the size of the ear circles and the color of their throats are the usual ways).  These are the frogs that I liberated from the meat department at the international supermarket (see blog story).  The tadpoles are indeed proof that they have adjusted to real life.  I'm thrilled that I will have baby bullfrogs next spring or summer.

rain lily

bullfrog in summer

Leaves have been raked away from the pond and the netting will stay up until the trees are bare and all of the pine needles have fallen.  The plants are slowly dying back with the lower overnight temperatures.  No frost yet, but that is coming.  Tonight I will bring in the rain lily that stays partially submerged in the pond all summer and blooms while the frogs hop in and out of the pot.

Dudley with his vole

Dudley continues his sentry duty around the perimeter, keeping the chipmunks and voles away.  He caught a vole and spent hours playing with it, nudging it to make it squeak and patiently watching it waddle away before pushing it with his nose again.  

Across my pond, life is getting quieter and the creatures are settling in for their cold winter wait.  I'd love to know what the frogs are thinking while nestled five feet below the surface in the soft warmth of the decayed leaves. I wonder if they are aware of their plump little progeny, and have any sense of the neighborhood congestion that will occur once they are fully grown next summer and swimming circles around their parents.  

Time to enjoy the little things

This unexpected and prolonged time off of work has meant that I have had opportunities to embrace special moments, great and small.  Here are some of the recent highlights

Final Graduation  The youngest graduated from college.   Wow.  Phew.  His older brother took him skydiving for graduation.  I was so relieved when they both returned and did not find their nervous, pre-flight joking about life insurance and forgetting to pull the cord at all funny.  Yes I am blessed to have them both alive and well educated.  We have had a lot of time together this summer.  Two of us are looking for work.

Lucky 

Lucky

Happy, Liberated Frogs  Lucky the frog has completely acclimated to life in the pond.  He began croaking his lonesome "jug-a-rum" noise about a week after his liberation from the meat department at The Great Wall grocery store.  Last week my friend and I liberated two pals for him.  We chose smaller frogs, in hopes that one or both would be ladies.  We named them Lucky Lady and Sam.  They seemed stunned by the pond at first and then quickly became used to the good life.  Now two frogs sing at all hours of the day and night.  I hope that means that the third one is in fact a lady frog.  One day this week I bent down to pull a stick out of the pond and Lucky was right beneath me, unaware, and begin his "humm..jug-a-rum..." right next to me.  Wow what a voice and the echo off the water was intense.  He quickly realized I was there and made a loud "hruumph" and dove to the bottom.


On July 4 we had quite a show from the two male frogs, croaking and puffing out their chins and hopping all over one another.  It seems Lucky Lady was nowhere to be found and not receiving their signals that they were interested.  But we are still not sure if Lucky Lady is a man or a lady.  We can't get close enough to clearly see the color under the chin and the size of the ear circles.  The croaking goes on day and night.  It is quite a show.

One of the many creative displays at the Chesapeake Bay Exploration Center

Glorious days, Unplanned fun  There have been many beautiful weather days this year, but last week was exceptionally wonderful because it was so beastly hot the week before.  The first morning of the trio of glorious days, I woke up cheerful and ready to enjoy the day.  I cancelled out of my Bikram yoga class (sweating in 105-degrees was an unpleasant thought when it was barely 80-degrees outdoors).  I called my friend and an hour later we met around the beltway and drove together to Annapolis, Maryland and then over the Bay Bridge to Kent Island.   There we enjoyed walking by the water, eating crab cakes at a new waterside restaurant, Bridges, and visited the Chesapeake Bay Exploration Center that was filled with interesting hands-on exhibits (some creatively displayed in old kitchen appliances) and an observation tower with a spiral staircase.  The best part about the whole day is that it was completely spur of the moment (no time to make plans or change plans) and absolutely relaxing.

curious catbird in a ray of sunshine

Bird in the House  Last week I left the door open to let in the cool breeze.  When I returned to the room, a curious catbird flew in.  After a few disoriented minutes for both of us, including the dog barking when he finally realized his space had been invaded, and a sweet moment when the bird hopped on my wrist and looked up at me ask if to say "please help me out", my son interceded and suggested I simply open the window next to the bird and let him out.  Sometimes it takes another person to make you realize the obvious solutions.  Out he flew and that was that.  Today he was in the garden, intrigued by the bucket of compost.


Praying Mantis  When I sat down for lunch at Kent Island last week, a small brown praying mantis flew onto my arm and began to pray.  It was such a sweet moment and I felt the urge to join him, all the while conscious that restaurant patrons don't always take kindly to seeing "bugs" while eating.  So I held my hands out so he could stairstep up them, thinking he would just fly off and go about his business.  He had no intention of leaving me so I walked to the outskirts of the patio where there were small bushes to  place him on.  A little girl noticed him and said to her grandmother, "look, that lady has a grasshopper."  Clearly not a bug fan (at least in restaurants), the grandmother scowled; I thought it best not to show her that it was actually a praying mantis.  I put him on the bush, hopeful that he would find others of his kind and glad to have had that little moment of prayer with him.

Juniper after the haircut

Juniper clippings

Haircut  While work is scarce, my haircuts are intermittent and I appreciate them all the more.  There is nothing like feeling that your hair looks good.  At my last appointment, I was surprised at how much hair I needed to have cut.  Recently, I gave the juniper bonsai a haircut and was amazed at the pile of clippings.  Taking care of these small trees requires patience and at the same time gives me the opportunity to meditate and enjoy nature and the act of giving.  While doing my caretaking, I watched the birds, listened to the frogs croaking, and relaxed.

First day of flying lessons

More flying lessons

Flying Lessons   The mother robins have been giving flying lessons in our backyard and not all of the children are good at it yet.  They spend a lot of time complaining loudly and the moms leave them unattended so that they are forced to try to fly.  One sat on the deck railing for a long time, not even calling his mother but looking fearfully at the ground and his surroundings, as if paralyzed.  Eventually, he flew and in the next several days I saw him with his sibling who was less fearful and a bit better at the art.

Three's a Crowd   There was a nest of baby robins in the hedge across the street.  My neighbor and I had a good time watching their hungry little heads bobbing up and down when a branch moved or they heard a noise that sounded like mom coming with dinner.  They opened their beaks in anticipation of a yummy worm and squawked disappointedly when they were not rewarded.  They were stuffed in their nest so tightly that it looked as if it would burst open.  The day after I took this photo, their mother brought them to my yard for lessons and they have not returned to the nest.  They probably no longer fit.

Lucky Frog Liberation

When my brother was visiting last week we took a trip to The Great Wall, an international grocery store filled with interesting food items.  They also have amazing fruits and vegetables at great prices.

At the back of the store in the meat section they have live fish, live eels, live turtles and live frogs.  It breaks my heart to go back there and usually I avoid that part of the store; although sometimes I am just curious enough to view the assorted body parts, such as chicken feet, that are sold in styrofoam packages.  On this particular day, my brother, niece and son invited me to look over the live bullfrogs and choose which two I would like to liberate - to buy by the pound and take home to my pond.

The tiny container where the enormous bullfrogs were kept did not allow space for them to move about, much less swim.  It was sad to peer in, knowing only two would be saved.  Some did not look very healthy or even alive, but the two I chose were quite awake and seemingly not damaged in any way.  My brother dealt with the butcher who put both of them into a small paper bag.

I held the bag in my hand and as my warmth began to reach the frogs, the bag began to jiggle.  By the time we got to the checkout, they were bouncing about in the bag, trying to come out of the folded-down top.  We put them on the conveyer belt and the bag moved up and down and the top started to open a bit, a frog appendage attempting to reach the open air.  The checkout clerk made a gasping noise and put her hands to her face.  She did not know what to charge us and had to find out the frog price per pound.  I tried to explain that we were not going to eat them but instead to liberate them.  She didn't care.  She wanted those frogs off of her space, all two pounds of them - BIG FROGS!

Because frogs are wet and they pee everywhere, we decided to put the paper bag inside of a plastic one. It still gyrated as it sat on my brother's lap on the way home.   Soon they would be free, ready to face the wilds of the backyard and the challenges of life in the pond.

My eldest wisely was concerned about possible contamination of the existing pond inhabitants and we decided to put them in a large aquarium, filled with about 8" of water, a log and a couple of floating plants.  They had room to swim about or climb out to dry on the log.  Most importantly, we put an antibacterial solution in the water so that they would be disinfected by the time we released them into the pond.

It was very cold for the next three days of their quarantine period.  Once I went out out to check on them and they did not move.  I poked them and they did not respond and I though they had died.  Sadly, I turned one over and it flipped its leg and tried to right itself.  I was so relieved.  They were simply in hibernation mode, unprepared as they were for the change in temperature from the meat department.

Finally the day came to turn them loose.  My son picked the first one up and put him on a rock that jutted out into the pond.  He just sat there.  We tried to coax him into jumping; poking him did not help.  My son gave him a shove and into the water he went, probably swimming multiple strokes for the first time since he was a very tiny frog back at the frog farm.  It must have been exhilarating for him.  We noticed the second one had a damaged eye, probably poked during his time in the meat department.  We went through the same routine with him, ending by pushing him into the pond.

Since then we have never seen one-eye again.  He was the one who rarely surfaced during the isolation period so maybe he stays below the surface of the pond all of the time.  Or maybe a predator came at him on his bad side and took advantage of him.  But Lucky, the first to jump, is just about the happiest frog I have ever seen.  He has enough fear that he won't let you get close to him, but he has the guts to surface and float happily among the plants, head above the water, front feet resting on a plant or floating.  When startled he darts below the surface and swims quickly to the opposite side, making it there in only a couple of strokes.

It must have all been so overwhelming for him at first, having never been outdoors and free to do what he wanted.  His legs seemed stiff and difficult to move, probably due to lack of use.  He seems to have regained his olympic swimming strength now.  He is a looker.  We think he is an American Bullfrog.   I hate to say it but as much as I think he is special, the pictures in the frog book look an awful lot alike.  But one thing is for sure, this is one lucky frog.  I just hope that he has sense enough to stay away from the hawks and owls and enjoys lots of mosquitoes and water bugs this summer.  It is a good life and I feel fantastic knowing that I was part of a successful liberation, for only $3.99 a pound!