Water Hyacinth's Bloomed Today

A great welcome home this evening; two Water Hyacinths bloomed today. These flowers are really quite intricate with the yellow design on some of the petals. As with daylilies, these flowers don't bloom for long but I counted at least five others getting ready to bloom. So we should be able to enjoy them for days to come.

Beautiful Colors Around the Pond

The plants around the pond are lush but the colors are mainly green. So it was great to see the Day Lilies start blooming and they are beautiful. The flowers are 6 to 8 inches across and being Day Lilies only last a day. Luckily the plants have a bunch of buds so the display should last for several weeks. The Elephant Ears planted 2 months ago around the pond are currently about 3 feet tall with giant leaves but should be 5 feet tall very soon. We had so many Elephant Ear bulbs, I was looking for places to plant them and some ended up in the middle of the back yard where we removed a Peach tree. We circled the area with red landscape bricks for definition.

Frogs and Wildlife Galore

This year has been particularly active with deer. We see them almost every day and they have been eating plants in the front yard that they never touched before. It may be that a large construction project nearby has chased them our way or removed some of their normal diet. I just can't imagine what the deer would do to the pondscape if the pond wasn't fenced in the backyard.
It is really amazing how patient the frogs are with me. This tree frog on the side of the shed sat still while I took 5 pictures. This green frog we found sitting in a pot in the pond allowed me to take 6 pictures until he'd has enough and he jumped onto a Water Hyacinth and then into the pond. I can almost hear the frogs say here comes the shutterbug again.
Last night while minding my own business watching TV, a large yellow cat walked by the on the deck. Upon closer inspection, this cat had no tags so I think he is a wild cat. I now wonder if he has also been fishing in the pond. If he has, I may have misjudged the Hawk and Owl. With all these preditors I guess I'm lucky to have any fish.

Small Pond Turns Toxic Overnight

Yesterday morning I found a 5 inch goldfish floating in the small pond and the water looked very cloudy. I searched in the plants and found two more 5 inch goldfish that had died overnight. It was a surprise since we saw them swimming the night before. We decided to empty the pond and give the whole thing a good cleaning. We found two more large dead goldfish and a large tadpole and frog alive and well. We should have had 10 large goldfish in the small pond so the hawk or some other predator must be feeding in this pond. After cleaning and refilling, we let the pond water sit overnight. This afternoon we restocked the small pond with the 30 baby fish from the various buckets around the ponds.

Silver Frog Missed Parenting Classes

We were very suprised to see Ms Silver Frog must have skipped the parenting classes as she didn't realize eggs should be laid in water. Instead she laid her eggs on a long flat leaf of one of our plants 20 feet from the pond. We decided to intervene so we cut the leaf and moved it to the water. The night before last we started moving some of our baby fish to a new clean bucket so we could clean their first bucket. We added these new frog eggs to this bucket with the baby fish. I don't know if we rescued the eggs before they got too dry sitting on the leaf. Only time will tell.

Tree Frog Likes to Grill

Last night I pulled off the grill cover so I could cook out some burgers and out jumped this green tree frog. He jumped onto the brick wall. As I turned to pick up the camera, he jumped back onto the leg of the grill were he stayed thru the burger cooking. The little guy looks a lot like the silver frog I took a picture a couple of a months ago.

Froggie Comes A-Courting

Last night this green frog stopped to pose for a picture as it was on the way from the small pond to the large pond. Note how the frog is sporting some fashionable duckweek on its head. The neat part was there was a big green frog in the large pond calling out perhaps for companionship and this frog seemed to be answering the call. The frogs may have just been friends but I suspect romance was in their plans.

Deer Candy

Four years ago we planted 3 Oak Leaf Hydrangeas along the fence in the front yard. Our plan was to add flowers in the summer and bright leaf color in the fall. We were surprised to find the deer loved this plant. We never saw any flowers and the fall color was missing because the deer ate the plant back to bare stems. We gave up on the front yard and moved what was left of the plants to the back yard inside the fence. After 2 years the Hydrangeas are finally coming back with some flowers and bright green leaves. We are looking forward to the fall to see if the fall colors love upto the hype we were expecting.

Great Night for Frogs

The night before last was probably the loudest night for frog chatter that we have experienced yet. We had day time temps of about 90 degrees and an afternoon downpour of over an inch of rain. I think these two events combined to invite all the neighborhood frogs to the ponds for a night of partying. Although sleeping would have been nice, it was interesting to hear the different voices from the frogs. At one point they were all chattering away when a frog let out a very loud deep throated croak and all the frogs hushed for about a minute. Another time the dog wanted to go out and the frogs were quiet while he wandered around but about a minute after he came in they resumed the noise. Yesterday the results of the party were evident with batches of newly laid eggs in both ponds and in the buckets being used for baby goldfish. The picture show how the plants have recovered from winter and are flourishing in the pond. Soon the day lilys will bloom adding some color to the rich greens of the rest of the plants. I saw the hawk hanging around the pond yesterday but was unable to determine if he had lunch during the visit. The baby frogs from a week ago are now spread out all over the yard with a number of them making it into the woods.