“Frogs have it easy, they can eat what bugs them”
I just came back from the Sampson Fund plant sale which benefits animals. Naturally I spend a bit of money mostly on tomato plants and herbs though I did buy a round clay pot filled with succulents and decorated around the plants with seashells. That was the one piece which set me back a bit. Later I’ll plant the tomatoes and herbs-maybe even tomorrow as carrying the plants to the car killed my back. I am now a question mark but the question remains elusive.
My car is green, well not really but it is covered in pine pollen. My world has turned green, a yellow-green, making me feel like an extra in Solyent Green and my turn is coming. This is the time of year I have to keep all the windows shut so I’m hoping for cool days or lots of rain. My deck is like a crime scene. After you sit down then get up, there is an imprint of your body left on the chair.
The day really is pretty. The new leaves shine brightly in the sun and there is a bit of a breeze. It is 63° which is about right for this time of year here. Gracie will be out most of the day, and I suspect she’ll nap in the sun in the grass at the back of the yard.
I remember being gone all day on a Saturday like today. We’d pack a lunch and take off and roam the town. Sometimes we’d go to the zoo while other times we’d Huck Finn it on the raft at the pond. The swamp was always filled with polliwogs and party grown frogs this time of year, and they were a big draw. That swamp was one of my favorite places. Being there always seemed to touch the magical just a bit. It had everything: a large front area for skating in the winter and for watching the changes in the polliwogs in the spring. It had small islands you could hop from one to another to go way back where the swamp ended. I remember watching the sewing needle bugs flitting across the top of the water. There seemed to be hundreds of them with their bright green wings. I didn’t know until we were all much older that my sisters were afraid their lips would get sewn shut by the bugs. I wish I’d back then. I’d have had a field day teasing the two of them.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: Plant, sewing needle bugs, Swamp, Tomato, wandering
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May 19, 2012 at 11:36 am
68 here today. The morning got more or less destroyed by a strong wind and when that finally calmed down the sky was filled with thick clouds 🙂 But it is nice anyway even if I think rain is heading this way. This is much warmer than we usually have here but I don’t mind 🙂
I lived beside a huge park, well it was more like a big forest to be honest. There’s a small zoo with animals living in the wild here in Scandinavia and some horses too.
There are several ponds but the pone we loved the most was up on a mountain and it was filled with salamanders and leaches 🙂 There used to be small fish in it too but they died one really cold winter.
On the top of the mountain were (and still is ) an Observatory, they opened it on clear nights and taught all the stars names and showed what planets could be seen at the moment. I still see that pond as a sort of paradise 🙂
Have a great day!
Christer..
May 19, 2012 at 6:48 pm
Christer,
It hit 70 today, and I thought it was too warm. I repotted plants and did stuff around the house. I ended up hot and sweaty.
We had woods, the swamp and a few ponds, but the closest woods weren’t very big. It did have blueberry bushes, and we ate more than we picked.
I would have loved that observatory!
Enjoy your evening!
May 19, 2012 at 11:38 am
Wash your new car today! Any kind of tree sap or pollen will damage the paint permanently! Mentioning windows, here is a question:
Which is better for your gas milage, to drive with the AC off or to keep it on and close all the windows?
Answer:
On the highway keep the windows closed. The AC uses a little energy, but the open windows create more drag and reduce the aerodynamic efficiency of the car and it will use more gasoline.
I always use the AC even at city street speeds because I hate the great outdoors. I for one hate anything that has to do with the great outdoors. I consider camping or roughing it, Motel 6, and I hate spending time with nature except in a zoo, a natural history museum, aquarium or a theme park.
I only thought that Cajuns from Southern Louisiana like swamps. Are you sure that you don’t have a little “Coon Ass” hiding in your family tree 🙂
Today the high temperatures will be in the low 90s again. There is no rain forecasted for the weekend and it will start to get hotter later next week. Summer in Texas.
May 19, 2012 at 6:56 pm
Thanks, Bob, I will get on it first thing in the morning.
I always knew that windows closed on the highway was better for gas mileage. I think my dad teught me that.
We used to camp but haven’t for many, many years. I enjoyed camping but didn’t enjoy being dirty. The camp site wasn’t all that far from where I live so I went home to feed the cats and that’s when I’d take my daily shower.
When I’ve traveled. I’ve stayed in some really horrible places. Camping was cleaner and nicer than those spots!
All of us kids loved the swamp. In the winter we’d ice skate there all day. The ice as clear, and you could see all the branches and stuff under the ice.
I was hot here today, and it was only in the low 70’s.
May 19, 2012 at 11:54 am
And the Hammers win the $160M game…now comes the big one, and I can only hope that Bayern Munich are able to beat Chelsea. Kicks off at 2.45 p.m on Fox.
May 19, 2012 at 6:56 pm
My Dear Hedley,
You know I am rooting for Bayern Munich!
May 19, 2012 at 9:00 pm
And it was….Chelsea.
Congratulations to a worthy winner
May 19, 2012 at 7:16 pm
I can’t remember a swamp as defined but we played in the woods where creeks flowed and had lots of bugs and fish to watch in the clean, clear waters. The woods was a place where we first learned to smoke and coughed our lungs out. A kid stole a cigarette from his Mother’s purse and we lit up. I had a sore throat for a week. It was a non filtered Camel. Yuk. But I did love camping. The older I got the less attractive it was. Now I do theme parks with my grandies.
May 19, 2012 at 8:08 pm
Z&Me,
The swamp had lots of undergrowth and looked a lot like the picture above.
I’m well beyond the camping stage myself right now unless it’s a sarafi camp with real beds and great food.
May 20, 2012 at 10:38 am
Hi Kat,
My yard has a slow-moving brook with little brooks that run into it. My brook runs about 2/10 mile down to the Mill River which is not much more than a brook. All of this was surrounded by wetlands of different kinds, either wet meadow, wet woodland or just plain wet. When we were kids we played in all of these wet places. There were frogs, polliwogs, salamanders, snakes, muskrats, ordinary rats, bats, skunks, raccoons. There were many times that we witnessed the Great Toadlet/Froglet Migration when the newly transformed tiny toads and frogs left their natal pond and went out into the world to find a place to live. There were hundreds of them streaming up out of the pond. Kind of creepy really. But they were cute.
Now a lot of this wetland is built over. I haven’t seen a snake around here in 10 years. There are still frogs because I hear them down there but no salamanders or turtles. No muskrats but plenty of ordinary rats. The trade off, I guess, is that we now have deer, coyotes and foxes.
Pine pollen up here is bad this week, too, though it isn’t quite as heavy as it will be in the next few days. I also have a red car which is gilded with gold. Yellow everything! Unless it rains. 🙂
Enjoy you day.
May 20, 2012 at 5:57 pm
Hi Caryn,
Your childhood sounds like mine except for the muskrats. I never saw one. I remember bats swooping at my head and laughing and yelling at the same time.
Around here I see a lot of foxes, wild turkeys, coyotes, rabbits (the bane of Gracie’s life), once in a blue moon a snake, racoons and skunks though I haven’t seen one in a while. The opossum hing around a summer but I haven’t seen his ugly mug in a while.
My new car is covered with the pollen as is my deck. It looks awful!