Three camps in two weeks

Boy Choir camp last week, 4H Coverbud Camp this week, and a two hour Junior Naturalist meeting over the weekend. It has been a kind of weird two weeks for me because certainly I haven't had anywhere near this much time to myself for, oh, about the last eight years. I spent most of the time sewing or reading review books, and every once in a while I would feel a fleeting moment of panic and wonder what it was I was supposed to be doing—what it was that I was missing because it wasn't usually so quiet.

For Calvin it was a delightful few weeks. He pretty much doted on the boy in the choir who told him everything he knew (and probably more) about quantum physics. He pretty much ran the classes on world geography in his 4H camp. He became intimately acquainted with the markings of an American Woodcock in his naturlists class. And after each long day he came home exhilarated...and completely worn out.

Deck frog, spigot frog, a tale of two amphibians

Every year around this time we have frogs that hang out on our house. Really that's on our house, although around it is also applicable. This year we have two frogs who have been more regular and reliable than any frog of the past. This is their story.

We first met deck frog on a warm afternoon. We spotted him by chance hanging out on the lower railing of our deck. We took pictures, we enjoyed watching him, and when we left for another activity, though nothing of it when he was gone upon our return. Frogs come, frogs go. A day later, though, he was on the deck again, this time on top of the railing. Over the course of a week or two we realized that he was always around our deck somewhere: if you just took the time to search him out he was there somewhere.

We named him Deck Frog.

Then came the morning that I was outside watering. Since potted plants love sun-warmed water, I started with the potted herbs on the deck, watering them from the can I leave full nearby, before refilling the can at the rain barrel and moving on to the raised garden boxes and their vegetables. Imagine my surprise when, upon finishing my job, I put the can down to see deck frog climbing out, perhaps feeling a little harried. I apologized profusely and returned the can, and the frog, to the deck.

When a similar thing happened again a few days later, I went out and bought myself a new watering can so Deck Frog could keep the old one.

Spigot Frog is an equally constant but less personable presence in our lives, perhaps because we spend a lot more time hanging out on our deck than we do hanging out by our spigot. I met Spigot Frog when I went to attach the hose to the outdoor spigot before setting the sprinkler on our newly transplanted grass, and there he was on the ledge of the cutout in our siding. He did not move when I attached the hose, and had moved only so far as the other side of the cutout when I came back to turn the water off. For weeks he has been there throughout most of the day, gone only at night when he is hunting.

We named him Spigot Frog.

Eventually they will leave us, as all our froggy visitors do summer after summer, so we will just enjoy them as long as we can. They are both Gray treefrogs, by the way, common visitors to Michigan homes. I wonder if Spigot Frog and Deck Frog go on dates when we are not looking.

May into June

The garden is growing, the warm weather is here. Time to grill, to read, to soak up the sun, to explore to the heart's content. It's summer (or at least it feels like it).

Summer

(holiday) weekend warriors

Since moving into our house, when we started by regrading the lawn and putting in one small garden, we have spent most of our holiday weekends working up a sweat in the yard. The projects have varied in type and size over the years, but as long as we were in town on a long weekend, we were working in the yard, usually with help from extended family.

Over six years this has meant a lot of change. When we moved in we had exactly one tree and the only garden was the builder's landscaping in front—everything else was grass, grass, grass. Grass that you have to water, weed, and mow. Now the house is lined with plantings and the yard bordered in flower garden; we have a total of nine trees, three raised vegetable garden beds, and one very large native plant butterfly and hummingbird garden; there are two dry rock rivers to divert the sump pumps that drain in our yard and a fire pit; and now, after this Memorial Day weekend, we now have a patio. There is still a bit of finishing work to do around it, but now we have a great new place to sit and enjoy our gardens and