By Francesca Filanc, for Let’s Talk Plants! July 2023.
Fun Surprises in the Garden
Here and there, I loved hearing frogs in the garden as I was writing this article. This morning I was opening cardboard boxes and breaking them down to put in the recycling, and as I opened a box to my great glee and delight, I saw something little move.
OH, it was a tree frog!
And then I saw another!
Very carefully I picked one up in each of my hands and, talking lovingly to them, I walked all the way around my garden to the grandchildren’s garden. I had to open a little gate that I have so that the dogs don’t tromp on the baby tears, and I placed one in a pond and one in another water feature. They each jumped or swam out and into the foliage!
Last weekend friends were swimming in the pool with their children. My little friend, age 8, came up to me all excited.
“Look what I found,” she said in an excited voice.
She had taken her skirt and draped it over a bucket with sand in it. Two tree frogs were in the bucket.
I thanked her so much and asked her if she would like to help me put the frogs in a good place for them in the garden. She wanted to take them home at first but then understood that they would do better staying in the garden. So, we carried them with care over to the grandchildren’s garden and put them in the area.
A few days ago, when my gardeners were here, I asked them to clean up some debris and throw it into the trash that was left over from a construction project in my kitchen. As we were going through the debris carefully, I mentioned how this was where I found two tree frogs a few weeks earlier in a box, and to our delight and surprise there was a bucket with rainwater holding first one, then two, then three…
In the end we found ten tree frogs!
The gardener carried them over in the bucket with some cardboard for them to rest on and hid the bucket in the garden, placing it under hedges outside my office window. I hope to hear them croaking in the near future!
Frogs are so good for the environment. Being an organic garden, they are thriving in my garden. They eat pests and their voices give so much joy!
Happy Gardening!
~ Francesca
