frog songs & flowering food
Now that our pond is consistently full and continually bubbling,
our frogs seem contented and serenade us each evening.
(Well, actually, a little each morning, late-morning, & mid-afternoon, too.)
We definitely have three green tree frogs,
and also one larger striped frog,
that seems to be of the same species
as the frog in the well at our squatting spot in Rogil.
Since we aren’t frog experts,
we’re not sure what all their croaking is about:
communication for sure;
but is it for courtship and mating,
inviting neighboring frogs over for a party,
or just chit-chat about the changing weather?
Who can tell?
But they’re reassuring noises whenever we hear them;
along with the chattering of the songbirds each morning
and the high-pitched squeaks of the bats at twilight.
Otherwise our valley is pretty quiet most of the day,
except for the morning and afternoon commuters to bamboo parque,
and the hay man, the cow man, and the goat man
who all drive by a few times around midday.
Last Tuesday we had a Root trine,
during the tail end of transplant time.
So we cleared out a bit more of the garden
to put in 9 more potato sprouts and another row of onions.
The potato sprouts from last time have begun to leaf out,
and the beets from the first two plantings have all emerged.
And along with the flowering kale and arugula,
the broccoli raab and mustard have begun to blossom, too.
Otherwise, we’ve returned to mulching,
and finished covering the entire driveway
and now working on the walking paths
that meander up the hillside and toward the house.
During the rainy days, these paths got quite soggy and muddy,
and we noticed that where we had mulched the driveway,
the water ran underneath the mulch and made walking on top easier,
like walking on carpeting, so while there is still roadside mulch,
we decided to do all our walking paths.
In other news, we found some tadpoles swimming around
in the deep puddle over by the honeysuckle fence near the ruin.
There’s at least a dozen, perhaps more.
Since it was a small pond during the rains,
I’m sure they were quite comfortable,
but as it’s been drying up,
their oasis is quite murky.
So we’ve begun relocating the tadpoles to our pond.
Three moved the first day, and then a few more each day,
so far a dozen, but I thought I saw another in there yesterday.
(Update: turns out there were a few more; we’re up to fifteen!)
And since we had the time,
we had been doing some pruning,
mostly to free some cork oaks from shrubbery and other saplings.
We also have at least another dozen stone oak saplings to remove,
because they’re overcrowding our corks and fruit trees.
Some we hope to transplant, or gift to friends,
because we hate killing trees, and want to use their holes for planting in,
and because the trees aren’t large enough to be useful for firewood yet.
And over the long holiday weekend,
we’ve been baking, painting with Marmalade,
and back into the garden,
planting another batch of rainbow carrots,
and another two rows of rainbow beets
during Saturday’s Root time.
And giving all the planted seeds a good soaking.
Many seeds from the past few weeks have emerged:
aside from the rainbow beets and carrots,
purple kohlrabi, red swiss chard, garlic chives,
and a second batch of broccoli raab and spinach have all sprouted.
Also, a whole patch of something else has emerged
and is growing it’s second sets of leaves, but for the life of me,
I can’t remember what I might of planted there,
and don’t recognize these little plants at all.
Saturday night was a short Flower time,
so I planted a few lupines in our yard,
and potted up some of the purple artichokes.
(I had run an experiment with the artichoke seeds:
directly planting some in little pots in our cold frame,
and sprouting some in a wet towel before planting.
So far, nine of the sprouting dozen have sprouted,
so those I’ve potted up, and a few
have since emerged and leafed out.
Only one of the cold frame ones have sprouted so far,
though that could be due to the cold frame
being a bit cooler than my kitchen counter.)
Next Flower time, I’ll soak another dozen to sprout.
And then figure out where we can plant some more of them.
(I figure I’ll try to sprout about forty of them,
and then gift a few seeds each to friends with large yards.
co-director (s) wrote on Mar 3:
Boy, frogs are the best. I really miss them. And great you rescued those tadpoles! Maybe I'll intern for you this summer
Lee wrote on Feb 27:
I love seeing your garden! It's -24 here and we are still very much in winter, but you are inspiring me to start some seeds. My boys and I love gardening so much, even though we garden in containers and a tiny strip in front of our window. We could use a boost to help us get through to our planting time - which is in early June!