150 Frogs

Tadpoles are like minuscule vessels of childhood joy. It seems fitting that in this house, one that we love and feel right in, we should find ourselves the lucky recipient of a Pacific Treefrog's progeny. All one hundred and fifty of them swimming and sunbathing in our tiny dirty pond. I was going to clean the pond because the algae died and turned the water blackish. It's cleared up a bit since then...but now I cannot clean it without concern about our little nursery of frogs.

In spite of the fact that I have only given birth to a baby once, and am happy as hell to see my reproductive organs put up a "gone fishing" sign*, I seem to find myself surrounded with new life. Everywhere I turn there are babies. My kittens, though healthy and getting much bigger now, are still my babies. Chick came to me as a puppy and was very much my baby. Our hens were day old babies when we got them- nodding off while standing up and then startling awake wondering where they could find some little snail to ravage. Babies keep entering my life.

Now I have one hundred and fifty tadpoles. Somehow, seeing the tadpoles made me imagine how my garden will change from a wasteland of lawn and dusty "low maintenance" shrubs into a wild tangle of flowers and food. There is so much work to be done to transform it that I feel slightly paralyzed. It's a big yard, for which I'm thankful, but every inch of it is either blanketed in lawn or is laid down with four layers of non permeable plastic and has things I must dig up out of compacted clay. I have never gotten a garden that wasn't a lot of work to transform.

While Philip was putting the roof on the chicken run and I was shoveling dirt into the wheelbarrow for the tenth time all I could think is "I'm too old to be starting over with a new garden. Let this be the last time I start over!"

I want a riot of flowers: shasta daisies, penstamon, verbena, black eyed susans, grandmother's pincushions, lilies, corn flowers, poppies, larkspur, cosmos, sage, salvias, lavender, wall flowers, and violets spreading blankets of sweet flowers under the shade of fruit trees.

Obviously I cannot have enough roses. Some of my old friends need to find place in my small paradise of plants: Frederick Mistral, Abraham Darby, Jardin de Bagatelle, Honor, Oklahoma, and Peter Mayle.

I better go get dressed. I have a lot of digging to do. I hope you all have happy productive week-ends!