Two frogs

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Hubby often goes down to the pond at night to look at the fish and feed them. The pond is deep so you can’t see them easily in the daylight. He has got a few minnows and goldfish in there. But over the last couple of nights he’s disturbed a frog that plopped into the centre of the pond. Tonight when he went out two matching frogs were looking back at him from either side of the pool.

So I asked him which one he’d kissed?

Lol.

For the birds

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The blackbirds sing,

The thrushes too

The robins nest,

Their fledglings new.

A magpie there

And pigeons too?

They congregate

And feed on seed.

Blue tits

and house sparrows,

All had their nests.

Feeding them all

Is our happy chore.

Yes eat your fill,

Of cherries ripe.

We’ve had ours now

The rest, enjoy.

 

More cherries…

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Used a hoe to pull the branches down and caught all these cherries in a brolly today. It was sunny for a couple of hours and the wind had dropped so we took the chance and dodged the rain showers. Picked loads, but there are loads left on the tree.

Now I’ve got to decide what to do with them. I might add them to some gin. Or I could make cherry pancakes.

This is a glut of cherries. If we were not in lockdown I would be sharing them with friends. It’s the biggest crop we have ever had from the cherry tree. If I could freeze them I would but I think they would spoil.

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Hit the wrong button!

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I’d written a poem about nature and autumn. But my phone won’t save drafts of my posts. I hit the wrong key. So I’ve lost it. It no longer exists. Like summer moving into autum then onwards, the poem has gone into the aether, lost for all time. I could try rewriting it, but the sentiment is lost, the feeling has gone. I’d done some nice rhymes, but I’m not going to easily remember them.

And when we get to this time next year? The world will have moved on through space and time. We never come back to the same place. The Earth turns, spiralling around the sun, which in turn moves around the galaxy…..

Bye words, take care xxx

Hedgehog dining.

A shady, spikey creature

Banging bowls together.

Clattering crockery,

Hog food left out for him.

Gobbling and scoffing quickly.

I opened the back door.

A glint in his eye and..

He scuttled off into the dark…

I imagined him saying

“I’ll be back……..”

Shock!

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My hubby just opened the back door and started shouting ‘come here quick’, I rushed over, expecting to see the stray cat we feed by the back door. Instead there was a huge 🦔 Hedgehog. It was scoffing the cat food we had put out for the stray! It’s as big as a small cat. It rushed off into the night when it was disturbed. I know we haven’t had many slugs and snails lately despite the wet weather. Now I think I know why! Still a bit of a shock to see it in the middle of a city. As long as it keeps away from roads it should be OK.

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Started in March…

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Finally finished in June.

After a long hiatus, I’ve finally started painting again. Mostly because there is a socially distanced craft fair on next weekend and I need to earn some money.

This is a kingfisher taken from a shutterstock photo I think. I’ve had the photo on my phone for months.

I love the blue/orange contrasting colours. I’m going to do a few tiny canvases and then one or two nature paintings and flowers from the garden… Plus lots of college work, so it will be a busy week for me… Wish me luck.

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Poor minnows…

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Oh dear! My hubbies minnows have been disappearing from the pond. He only put them on a couple of weeks ago. And there only seem to be three left.. There were six. The other thing he saw tonight was a large frog..

So I decided to Google ‘Do frogs eat minnows?’, the answer came back..

. Frogs living in captive setting will eat guppies, minnows and goldfish, provided the prey can be caught and is smaller than the predator. Frogs prefer live fish. Many frogs catch the fish they eat by quickly rolling their sticky tongues to capture the prey and then swallow the fish whole.

Er, we didn’t know that. I’m worried now that the rest will go. Hubbies going to try and rescue them, but I dug the pond four feet deep! How we deal with it I don’t know… We want a wildlife garden…

We have a hedgehog

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My hubby has just been out in the garden and discovered a large hedgehog eating the mealworms we put out for the blackbirds and Robins.

His nightly parambulation also resulted in him seeing a frog by the pond.

This afternoon we saw a baby robin perched by the pond. I think we really do have a natural garden.

The drawing is an attempt to draw a hedgehog. Bit bald in parts!

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