I do love

having frogs living in my garden. We have several frog ponds and I keep a couple of bowls filled with water in sheltered parts of the yard in the summer as well. We have several species and I don't even mind the motorbike frogs (Litoria moorei) with their chorus of  "Hello, ladies. Care to join me and make beautiful babies?" that's going on every evening.  It sounds like this and, when there are a number of males trying to entice females to lay their eggs in the ponds as there are at the moment, it can get rather noisy. When I went out last night one handsome boy was draped over the edge of one pond while another was spread out on the surface of the water while they alternately called. They must be successful in attracting mates because there have been tadpoles all year regardless of whether it was breeding season or not and much to the delight of a certain Miss Two who spends considerable time squatting at the side of the pond trying to get them to come to her.

So it's established that I like having frogs around. What isn't so much fun is where they spend their time when they're not trying to attract a mate or having a dip in a pool. I've been doing a lot of garden work lately and in the past few days I've had numerous encounters with frogs all over the yard. Bear in mind that these are quite large frogs - they commonly reach 10 cms in length - so unexpectedly coming across one can be startling to say the least. I've found them snuggled up under potted plants, in the water wells of water well pots, among plants in the garden and sunbathing around the ponds. One of the sunbathers was tiny - about the size of the first joint of my thumb  - and its time in the sun had turned it as usually happens with these frogs from dingy brown to a pretty cream, green and gold. Then there were the two who were sleeping in a large pot under a pile of smaller empty ones - I'd left them out overnight - until I started to lift the pots out to plant up some seedling tomatoes. I don't know who got the bigger fright them or me as the frogs flung themselves around trying to scale the side of a 45 cms high pot. I tipped them out but truth be told all they had to do was calm down and they'd have had no difficulty scaling the side since they can easily climb up to 2 metres - trees, shrubs, even brick walls don't daunt them. These weren't the only ones I found in unexpected places. Yesterday I picked up a cardboard carton I'd been using to carry plants around to various parts of the garden the previous day and woke another into a panicking rush for cover.

I think Pisces is getting used to my shrieks as yet another frog and I meet unintentionally. I must have been louder than usual with this morning's encounter, though, since he came running when I accidentally stepped on a frog that had settled in under a piece of old shower curtain I'd been using to protect some plants the day before. Luckily I hadn't put my full weight down so the frog escaped relatively unscathed but I wasn't as lucky as the frog since I jarred my knee trying not to hurt it.