The story of the toads

Does your garden have toads living in it? Mine does. Oh, it's not that they're all over the place and I see them every day. I do see them occasionally though, and I like to think that the reason I don't see them more often is they're carefully camouflaged, hungrily hopping around beneath the cover of green I've provided for them. Sometimes though, conditions are right and I get much more exposure to toads than usual. May 2009 was one of those times -- in fact, it was the time when I learned more about toads than ever before.

As you may know, my yard slopes down from the front to the back, and behind my yard is a strip of common ground that is mainly trees and bush honeysuckle. This strip is only about 15-20' wide or so, and in this strip the ground slopes down quite sharply. Somewhere at the base of that slope is an area that can get saturated during wet weather, forming a large puddle (or multiple puddles -- it's not easy for me to get back there or see through the bushes).

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Various Nothings

As I was looking through my photo archives to find a couple of specific images, I came across a few different images that never made it into posts. I also found a few older images (from before I started the blog) that I'd like to share with you today. I'll do this from time to time, as I have a more older garden photos that are worth sharing too.

So today it's more about the images. (I did not yet find those specific images I was looking for.)

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Soil? Soil is for wimps!

In the world of plants, there is a lot to love. There's so much variety in size, shape, color, fragrance, form, and dozens of other factors that those of us who love growing plants can't help but find a few favorites -- plants we are just drawn to for some reason. For me, it's typically the big vigorous plants that you kind of need to fight with and show who's boss: bamboos, elephant ears, big ornamental grasses, vines.

But there's another type of "plant" that I'm fascinated by way at the other end of the scale. Tiny, ubiquitous organisms that typically go unnoticed, but have a lot to offer to those who care to look. I'm talking about lichens.

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New!

Although I feel like I could work in the garden every day, all year long, it's probably good that there are a few months during the winter when there's not much I can do. It's a great time to inspect all of the tools that I'm too busy using during the growing season too even think about, let alone inspect or replace.

One of the "tools" that I've really not paid attention to this past year is my work shoes.

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Checking in on the greenhouse plants

Last winter was the first year for my temporary greenhouse, and I was out there almost every day checking the temperature, seeing how the bamboos were doing, and just enjoying all of the green during the blah days of winter. I'm not sure what's different this year -- maybe the novelty of having a plastic sheeted refuge from the cold has worn off, maybe I'm too busy with other things, or maybe since the bamboo in the yard is larger this year I've got enough green to look at -- whatever the reason I haven't been going out to the greenhouse very much this year.

In fact, I think I've only been out there one time since moving the plants into it, and that was to check for leaks and to add some magnets to flaps on the roof (to keep the wind from lifting the flaps). So this weekend I decided to go out there and see how everything was doing.

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By the Bucket

After shutting down the stream due to sub-freezing weather returning, I noticed that a water-filled bucket had frozen over again. This was not surprising.

What was surprising was how very pretty the ice was.

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The stream in winter

When I added the artificial "stream" water feature to my garden in 2006, I immediately fell in love with the atmosphere it created. Its quiet, bubbly voice made a big impact, adding a calmness to the patio area that I never would have thought possible. It became so integral to the surroundings that when its first winter came around I did whatever I could to keep that water flowing.

I remember bringing buckets of hot water out there on cold evenings, hoping to keep the stream temperature above freezing for the night.

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The bamboo gives and the bamboo gets

After the snow melted in our recent "heatwave", I was checking out one of my bamboos that was bent to the ground in the snow, just to see if there was any damage. I didn't see any problems -- no bent or broken culms or branches. I did notice something interesting though. First, a little setup...

Since I removed the one bamboo from the raised bed this summer, this plant is the bamboo with the densest foliage right now, and that makes it an ideal shelter for birds during the cold weather.

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Sneaking in some cleanup

The weather the last few days has been unseasonably warm, and with a temperature around 65ºF and a line of storms moving into the area, I thought I should do something about this mess behind the house:

I waited until March to clean up back here last year and wrote that I didn't know why I waited so long as this is the part of my yard I look at the most during the winter. So this year I wanted to get it presentable much earlier.

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