How To Make a Frog House

Frog houses are a great idea. They snuggle into a cool corner of your garden and give your frogs somewhere to hide from the cats and cool off when they are not in the water. Frogs are important in the garden as they gobble up that nasty mosquito larvae. So if you have water you need frogs. How to make a frog house!? Drive around on the ride-on mower with the flames painted on the side, and yawn at the same time as you take a tight corner, then smash into a terra cotta pot housing your most precious Polyanthus Tuberosa Tubers that look like bulbs. That is Step number One.

Because the best Frog Houses are made of junk and broken pots.  I repotted the Polyanthus Tuberosa ( I like to say Polyanthus Tuberosa because is sounds so intelligent when you say it out loud and it is the kind of word that rolls about your mouth!), using some of the smaller pieces of terracotta in the bottom of the new pot for drainage.   Then I took the big curved broken  pieces and added another broken pot that had been waiting for just such an occassion, and made a dark damp hide away for frogs.   I tucked it in beside the wine cask that sits under a down pipe, where a frog lives every year. The cats hate my frog houses. 

When we were kids at the beach in NZ, we used to fill the inside of an old tire with water and almost always a frog would take up residence. Then you make the frog house inside the tire. Not as pretty but still fun for children.

Now look who we have here. This little chick has two mothers. I am not sure how this happened but yesterday I saw both chooks fly at and run off a bemused pea hen, then zoom clucking with indignation, back to this one little chick. I guess it is some kind of shared parenting.  I would like to think it is the chicken TonTon retrieved but I don’t think it is. I think that one fell through the cracks in time. This might be his sister though. 

And here is our wee Stinky the Second. The chick recovering from a hawk attack. She has these two massive wounds on either side of her body but they have dried up and no longer smell. Yesterday I let her back in with her sisters.  And they accepted her without fuss. Her ability to get about is improving too.  There are plans afoot to make a mobile run for them. So they are hanging out in a makeshift run on the lawn. 

I call her Stinky the Second because the first Stinky was the first chick that I nursed back to health after a rat gnawed at her head.    This was before I got  cats and guineas for the barn and a rooster for the hen house.  They keep the rodent population in check.  Stinky lived for years but had a tendency to walk in circles. 

Now you are never going to guess what these seedlings are. Wait, I will find you the link.  OK.  Remember when we collected the hedge apples in the fall and stored them in a bucket outside all winter.  Well, earlier in the spring we took the pongy mess down the back and poured it along some shallow trenches. I did not blog that step because frankly it looked like grey vomit and I could not see how any seed could be viable in that mess. However much to my surprise the seeds are sprouting. We are growing a hedge!  A very old fashioned hedge! Oh me of little faith!!

Good morning.  We had some rain in the night which was very welcome after such a hot day yesterday. It looks like today will be much cooler but sunny. The plants will have a wonderful stress free growing day today.

There are many new readers to the Kitchens Garden pages  and WELCOME to you all!   I am going to do a walkabout with the camera today and post the shots tomorrow for you. I will put together a page with  introductions and updates for all the animal characters whose stories we follow.  So you will all know who is who.

One thing to remember when you are reading is that I post around dawn every morning and the material is always from the previous day. So everything is absolutely current and from The Kitchens Garden and it’s Farm, unless we have a field trip. I will tell you if I use a shot that is more than 24 hours old, but I very seldom do.

Remind me to call the swine herd again today. I need to find out when we can pick up Sheila The Baby Piglet. I will certainly take you in my camera on that field trip.

Well Minty is calling from her gate. She is being weaned down to two bottles a day and is not taking it well.  I hate the weaning.

Have a lovely day.

celi