Special guest: Fountain frog

I set up a whiskey barrel water feature in the dappled shade of grove every year, using whatever found items we have lying around-old glass lampshades, terracotta pots – whatever allows for the fountain tube to pass up vertically. This year I added a papyrus along with some water lettuce and hyacinth, and apparently that was just the early-July curb appeal Fountain Frog needed to move in. 

I did finally clean out the algae one afternoon when Fountain Frog was off doing Fountain Frog things and he disappeared for a couple of weeks, along with some dragonfly larvae that I’d carefully taken out and equally carefully put back in. 

Happily I’ve seen the four dragonfly larvae and our frog friend since then. Now I have to either build a pond that is deep enough not to freeze, add a heating element, or escort the guests to a similar ecosystem. We have a stream in the front yard but a stream is not the same as a pool, so I guess I’ll be making a weird phone call to an expert in the near future. I’m hoping no tadpoles. There are tiny toads all over the yard right now. I don’t know where the parent toads live. Everywhere, it seems. 

It’s gratifying how such a small feature, really just meant to be relaxing and ornamental and made of household flotsam, can become its own little ecosystem.