For the past few nights, it’s been a little quieter around here. What has changed? I noticed a little wad of organic matter attached to one of the horsetail shoots in the fountain. It is clear, and has a few little tan commas in it. Aha! The quiet is from satisfied frogs! All their chirping has finally culminated in success in making an attempt to make more frogs. Yay! I’ve always liked frogs and their dry terrestrial relations, lumpy warty toads. When I was a kid I went with my dad to an appointment he had to sell a hearing aid to some farmer out there in the boondocks. While he was in the farmer’s house, I was outside exploring the canal that ran past the house. I caught a toad so big it reminded me of a football. Dad let me take it home, and it quickly disappeared from its well-appointed water-filled dish I had set up for it in my bedroom. Mom immediately knew it would end up under the really heavy couch and die. Turns out it completely disappeared; we never found even a desiccated corpse. As a matter of fact, none of my menagerie of wild beasts were ever found in the house after their escapes: no snakes, frogs, horny toads, fence lizards—nothing.These tiny froglets in the fountain may magically produce among themselves another Clarence, a tame, house-living amphibian whose only mistake in life was living between a couple of dinner plates and getting smashed when they were moved. A new Clarence would make me happy. (I covered Clarence’s burial in my post of February 19, 2008, Clarence D. Frogge, R.I.P.)
6 comments:
How did you take that great picture? It looks like through a window on the side on the barrel.
In early morning, when the sun comes over the mountain, the light is perfect for pictures like that. Most pro photographers figure that after 10 AM and before 4 PM, there’s no use to waste film or electrons or digits. Today’s (May 25) picture was taken when the sun first peeked over the mountain.
For people who like to sleep late and still take good pictures, live to the west of a high mountain. By the time the sun comes up, you’ve had a good sleep and still have good light for photos.
Sorry, I forgot to answer your question. This is looking into the water from a low angle above the water.
The good light lasts till about 11am and 5pm in Australia :)
Susan! You’re alive! The storms down under in Queensland are reported here as horrible with power outages and flooding. Good to see that you’re on line.
Yes, the storms have been bad and the flooding worse. We got cut off by the floods for awhile but our house stayed dry. The ground outside is still saturated but that is minor compared to all the people who got water through their house or just had their house washed away. There have been King Tides on the Gold Coast and a lot of beach erosion. We're a long way from that though. Colin had to help send all the kids home from school early one day - they liked that. There were concerns they would be cut off from being able to get home on flooded roads. This is one flat country and it doesn't take much to flood it....on the other hand the dams are filling up beautifully and the 10 year drought has been declared officially over. Yay!
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