wildlife garden!

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 5:32 pm

I know I've posted in the past about the wonderful tiny pond my sweetie surprised me with some time ago. I've planted and rearranged rocks and tried my hack-handed best to landscape a sort of "japanese garden" around it. But I'm such an ADD gardener, popping from the veggies to the pond to the flowerbeds to pruning the trees to whatever caught my eye that moment, it's all rather luxuriously shaggy. And the two little ponds haven't been properly cleaned in about a year.
In a (rare these days) sunny moment, I took my teacup down to evaluate what was happening around the ponds. And spotted the nose, eyes, and toes of a little winter-brown tree frog poking up from the water and resting on a rock. So I've been making a point to go visit him, and complement him on the fine job he's doing keeping my pool free from mosquito larvae. This weekend, I discovered that the other pool had a frog too! She's a bit different in size and color from the Mr., but also quite willing to sit still on a lilly pad & listen to me ramble on about how lovely it is to have her there. A shaft of sunlight was illuminating the depths (all 2 or so feet of them) of the pool. I noticed movement. At least 3 juvenile forms of insect were happily patrolling the muck at the bottom, I suspect at least four of what I saw might be dragonfly nymphs? Need to look into that. What was more wonderfully distracting was discovering that my froggy is a mommy! I was able to see about half a dozen wiggly tadpoles, hind legs already forming, darting about in the shaft of light. No wonder Mrs. Froggy has been so attentive! Mr. was chirruping to her last night, but she was wisely holding her peace. No sense letting unfriendlies know who is living in the pond. So now I'm going to read up on wildlife gardening- I think my "style" is much more suited to that than it is to the very-meticulous Japanese form (and my Japanese friends would probably faint away if I ever dared call my garden that anyways)
BTW, for Stewies who live in the area of Tacoma, Wa., do be sure to track down and visit Kubota Gardens. It's a little hard to find, but it'll take your breath away.

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CritterPainter wrote on Mon May 17, 2010 5:49 pm:

whatta ya know, it's technically in Seattle. Here's alink with pics for everyone who doesn't live near here: http://www.kubota.org/index.htm

eileen wrote on Mon May 17, 2010 9:40 pm:

Your wildlife ponds sound fascinating - much more fun than just ornamental ones could ever be.

I have a large wildlife pond in my own garden and spend hours staring into its depths and watching all the wildlife it attracts.

Jewell wrote on Tue May 18, 2010 4:05 am:

Good going! I've always wanted frogs, but I thing the gold fish eat them and their eggs. Darn.

Your pond sounds lovely and I can't wait to look up the Kubota gardens :)