This week we have more contrasting images, beginning with this unidentified frog, almost certainly one of the varieties of cricket frog found around here, chilling (or more likely warming) at the edge of the water in a local park – I liked the myriad bubbles trapped in the algae and weeds that formed the water’s margin. This is the time of year we begin hearing the high-pitched creaks and beeps of the chorus frogs, sometimes called peepers, though they can be exceptionally hard to spot even when you know you’re right on top of them. Part of this is their tiny size, often less than 3cm in body length, part of this is their camouflage, and part of it is their habit of finding good hidey-holes among the vegetation and mud. I don’t recall the exact circumstances of this image, given that it was nine years ago and one of dozens that I shot on that foray, but it’s probable that I’d spooked it from the edge and this is where it paused after its jump into the ‘water.’
Not quite so nice three years later in 2014.
I had initially chosen a different frame, but then spotted the one above and liked the story more. This abstract tableau is one of the buds on my unexpected almond tree, one that had sprouted randomly within our compost pile and I transplanted into the yard. They don’t normally look like this of course, because usually the freezing rain storms occur well before the tree would ever bud out, and I was a little concerned that this would be responsible for stunting or outright killing off the tree. It proved much hardier than that, however, and has even survived multiple transplants, including the move to the new place. This year (meaning 2020,) it budded out early and is presently leafed out nicely – not fully, but certainly making a good show of it, as you can see from the frame to the left, taken yesterday.
And one more from that same ice storm in 2014, below, because it’s much fartsier – it was my original choice, from the bulbs that The Girlfriend’s Sprog had planted.
