My garden (an apology)

I was chatting with Karrita the other day ( Mymothersgarden.etsy.com ) and said I didn't really have a garden, it was mostly gravel.

Afterwards, I thought "Eeek, I hope the garden didn't hear me!"



Because actually, I love my garden. It is mostly gravel on purpose, because my hay fever has been a lot easier to bear without a lawn to cut!



We have quite a few pots with various plants in (no, don't ask me to name them) and I've also broadcast handfulls of seed, and allowed plants to self seed where they will. We have lots of aquilegia and foxgloves coming up.


I know these ones (above)! They're snakeshead fritillaries, and look lovely fluttering about in the breeze.


And this is a little acer, chosen to contrast with the smoky blue grey fence.



Last but not least, I love my pond, where the tadpoles are growing bigger every day.

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YAY for pondlife!

I love my pond, every morning I pop outside to see how the tadpoles are getting on - quite often while still in my dressing gown, so it's a good thing we have high fences!



They've mostly hatched now, but are still in the safety of the spawn mass. There are some fallen leaves in the water, so many are clustering in the shallow warmer water on the leaf surfaces.

Last year, when they got braver and moved into the shallow water at the shelving edge of the pond, where the water is warmer, a lot of them were picked off by the blackbirds :-(




The water boatmen took a lot too -so I spent many a happy hour getting in nature's way, scooping ot water boatmen and chucking them over the fence! They soon came back though.




Big excitement this morning - saw the first newt in our pond! I love newts even more than tadpoles, so I won't mind the newt picking off a few for lunch.

In our previous garden I spent hours watching newts do their courtship dance - it's really cute. they bend their tails back parallel to their bodies and wiggle it about - very sexy, if you're a lady newt. They develop beautiful orange chests too.



And then it's egg laying time. Unlike frogs, newt eggs are laid individually. The mummy newt grasps a pond leaf in her back legs, lays an egg and carefully wraps each egg in a leaf - so sweet! I'm looking forward to newt taddies - they develop front legs first, the other way around from frog taddies.

I'll stop now - sorry, I got carried away. Every now and then I miss teaching so much I can't help myself from presenting a lesson!

I'm going to be a granny!

Bet that got my kids' attention!

When I looked out of the window this morning I had to rush straight out to the pond...



Our first frog spawn of the season!

Last year was our first spring as "pond owners" and I was worried that the frogs wouldn't find us. They did, of course. Must have been the signs I put up eveywhere...



Some of last year's tadpoles "forgot" to change into frogs, and were still swimig around, legless, in November. No sign of them now, however.

Can't wait for my new babies to arrive!