So the frogs are clearly enjoying our pond. As I mentioned before, we found a generation of “wild” tadpoles in our pond after placing six bullfrog tadpoles in there ourselves. An additional generation has shown up in the time since then. And now this morning, Rachel found a new clutch of eggs, making a fourth generation. (In the picture, they’re the tiny white spots in the roots of the hyacinth.) We haven’t even had the pond a month. And they say rabbits are prolific….
A few more plants have been added to the pond in Green Man’s Grotto. Tadpoles — both those we put in ourselves and the “wild” ones — seem to be doing well.
When we built our pond, we put in six bullfrog tadpoles and several aquatic plants from a pond supply store. Today, however, we have found at least a dozen much smaller – tiny, in fact – tadpoles in the pond. We know that a frog has been hanging out there but we don’t know if he has anything to do with this new development or if these hitched a ride on the plants from the store.
The amount of land (more or less) under my control right now is 0.14 acres. This amounts to: 1.79 x 10-5 of my town 4.84 x 10-7 of my county 6.01 x 10-9 of my state 5.76 x 10-11 of the United States 3.82 x 10-12 of land on Earth So, not much. HOWEVER, this is an advantage when I attempt to think about the energy flows. For example, I was never very worried about food waste since it is biodegradable and would break down in the landfill fairly quickly.
Green Man’s Grotto has been extended and now includes a small pond (4’ diameter, 2’ deep with a shelf at 1’ deep). We’ve added water lillies, water lettuce, cattails, and blue flag iris within the pond. Around it we’ve planted creeping jenny, sneezeweed, and yarrow. The stone is limestone which we gathered from the area. (We live in the limestone capital of the world, you know.) The pebbles are landscaping rock taken from another part of our yard, which we have future plans for.
Swamp milkweed
The next step we’ll be taking to increase relatedness here at our house: vermicomposting. We have a thousand worms on the way. 😂
Bumblebee on purple coneflower 🌱
Butterfly weed in Green Man’s Grotto is starting to bloom. Come on, butterflies!
About three weeks ago, a friend asked me if I wanted to help him keep bees–to which, of course, I said yes. The bees live on his property, which is much more spacious and near bee amenities like woods, water, crops and flowers. And so we set up our first hive. And then (a day after I posted about wanting expand the web of relations in my life), a wild swarm showed up at my friend’s house.