We have been doing this for fifty weeks. Wow! That amazes me. Thankyou.

This week I am ignoring my own rules and posting photos that I  took yesterday. You can either follow the rules, or not. I don’t mind at all. I just simply enjoy the fact that each Sunday we are here together sharing photos.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

This post was inspired by a young man with a burgeoning  interest in frogs. I thought I would publish some photos here of the simple frog ponds I have at home.

When my children were small I was the go to “frog lady” of my local area. I would supply a batch of tadpoles to the local primary school so that the children could watch the tadpoles turn into frogs in a living science project.

I live in the Southern Midlands of Tasmania, in an area of dry sclerophyll forest. There are places near me that have evocative names, reminiscent of wetter times. Tiny hamlets called Lower Marshes, Broadmarsh and Green Ponds, but with 200 years of European settlement and a piecemeal approach to land management, the marshes and the green ponds have all been drained and replaced by gorse covered hills and dusty paddocks.

This next photo is of a part of my garden. I was in the process of turning the blue clam shell into a new frog pond, when life intervened. I am so busy as well as very easily distracted, that before I had finished properly positioning the clam shell the rain had filled it up with water and the frogs had filled it with spawn.

This next photo was taken this winter, the large wooden box was a fish tank until it sprung a leak. The spouse fixed the leaks with some silicon and it worked really well as a frog pond for a couple of years. When it finally gave up the ghost and sprung multiple leaks, I  put an old eski inside it as well as the plastic orange container thingy. The frogs still use it.

This is a photo of it this morning. It is surrounded by a lovely tangle of raspberry canes, a self sown apricot tree and assorted weeds.

If you look very carefully at this next photo you can see the container of water. This is one of those large black 40 litre buckets with the rope handles that you can buy at any hardware store for about $10. I put it down in the garden and forgot about it. It filled itself up with rainwater, the raspberry canes and grass hid it from sight and the frogs moved in. It is absolutely chockers with tadpoles.

Now for some photos of my more elaborate frog ponds. This next one is an old bath that the spouse rocked into place for me. The dead sticks in the bath were just put there for the lizards to use as a ladder when they fall into the water. An echidna has also fallen in to this bath, just under the water is a large branch and a large ceramic pot which helped the echidna to climb out of the bath. Bull rushes are just poking through the surface as well.

This next photo shows my first frog pond, which is in the middle of a rather grassy garden. I try and leave the grass long so that the frogs have somewhere to hide when they first emerge from the water but it is a bit of a balancing act because it also gives the snakes somewhere to hide as well.

This is another shot of the clam shell frog pond. I have just removed some old shrubs that had shaded the pond and replanted with some grevillias and leucodendrons. The grass is winning at the moment and I should be doing something about it as opposed to just photographing the tangle.

Can you see that reddish coloured weed on the surface of the pond. That is duck weed and it is a great big pain. It reproduces by dividing itself and will quickly cover the surface of a pond or farm dam. I have a love hate relationship with the rotten stuff. I love how it gives the tadpoles protection from hunting birds as well as a surface for newly emerged froglets to hop onto while they take their first breaths of air. I hate how aggressive it is and how it will very quickly smother the pond to the exclusion of all else. I saw some of it in the water plant section of a large hardware chain the other day and I would strongly advise against buying it.

Here is a close up of  it. I don’t know its proper name I just call it duck weed. If you are going to buy water plants for your pond I would sit them in a bucket of water inside before I put them into the pond just in case some of this stuff has hidden inside the pot.

What I am trying to say is that a backyard frog pond doesn’t have to cost the earth or be an elaborate set up with pumps and filter systems it can be as simple as an old eski in a wooden box. All the clam shell ponds have rocks and gravel covering their base as well as rocks placed on one side of the pond up to the rim, so that if any frogs that cant climb hop into the water they can hop back out. The rocks also provide the lizards with a handy spot to wait for emerging frogs to hop up for lunch.

All the frogs photographed here are Brown Tree Frogs (Litoria ewingii).These are climbing frogs with large climbing discs on their fingers and webbed toes so the plastic sides of the clam shell ponds don’t bother them at all. Tasmania also has burrowing frogs who have claws for digging on their fingers and toes and they would become trapped in a plastic pond, as they wouldn’t be able to climb out.

There are some more frog photos as well as some links to more frog information here

]]> http://frogpondsrock.com/2010/11/simple-frog-ponds-for-your-back-yard/feed/ 11 http://frogpondsrock.com/2010/10/a-weekend-in-melbourne/ http://frogpondsrock.com/2010/10/a-weekend-in-melbourne/#comments Sun, 03 Oct 2010 20:45:13 +0000 frogpondsrock http://frogpondsrock.com/?p=5041

Hello my bloglings, I need your help.

Next month I will be in Melbourne for a long weekend. We were supposed to be going to Raymond Island for a wedding but that has been cancelled. The Spouse hates travelling, loathes big cities with a passion and with his grumpy hat firmly on his head has decided to stay home with the dog.

I have given The Spouse’s plane ticket to David’s girlfriend, Bubbles and I am really looking forward to spending four days in Melbourne with the kids.

The last time David and I were in Melbourne was five years ago with Mum.David was 11 and we did all the normal kid focused touristy things. The zoo, Vic market, the aquarium etc.

This time I will have two teenagers with me who are interested in street art,food,clothes,good coffee and music. We will be using public transport and I wouldn’t mind checking out some markets on the Sunday.

I was thinking of exploring the laneways and visiting Chinatown.We will be having a look at Lygon street as well as going to the National Gallery and the Museum.

So this is where you come in. What do you suggest that we see and do on our four day trip? What hidden gems are there for some Tassie country kids to see that will blow their minds?

And for those of you not from Victoria here are some photos I took this morning on my walk.

Here is one of my finished sculptures in the garden, I have filled this with water and once some algae starts to grow inside the pot I will put some tadpoles into it.

As the title says these photos were all taken here.

For my overseas readers wallabies are small kangaroos.

Small, tasty, kangaroos.

Actually, to be precise they are small, tasty,plentiful, kangaroos that are in imminent danger of providing me with a nutritious lunch, if they don’t stop eating my garden right this second!!!

*takes a deep breath*

Normally the wallabies and I get along quite nicely. They keep the grass down. They only eat the lower branches of my fruit trees and they aren’t as destructive as those rotten, bloody possums.

I loathe possums.Possums will seriously damage a young fruit tree in order to nibble on one or two blossoms. Possums will break half a dozen branches climbing to the  top of a young tree and then once they are up there they will break another couple of branches, just for fun as they go about their possummy business.

I went outside today and found that parts of my flower garden had been seriously nibbled. I had planted out some chrysanthemums, pansies and marigolds. The wallabies, thanked me for my thoughtfulness and chomped away merrily. They also had a snack on a pot of geraniums that I had been thinking about planting out into Mum’s garden.

My flower garden is in a constant state of flux. Sometimes it is quite nice but mostly my garden is in a state of rambling neglect. The plants need to be able to tolerate severe frosts, occasional snow, baking heat and prolonged drought. When you factor in wallabies, possums and the occasional passing deer, combined with my she’ll be right attitude you have a garden that looks like this.

Which brings me to the point of this rather rambly post. Mum’s garden.

I have been thinking a lot about the plants that I want to use.They need to be colourful and fragrant, drought tolerant, frost hardy and not on the local wildlifes most nommed list.

This is going to be the site for Mum’s garden. There is a natural hollow there that is filled with the remains of a bonfire at the moment. I am going to put two kiddies clam shells in the hollow and voila we have two frogponds.

Mum liked proteas as well as those giant banksias that were the baddies in snugglepot and cuddlepie. I know those plants fit the climactic bill and are pretty inedible as well.

I have lots of bulbs already. White Nerines in a pot, that I gave Mum one year for her birthday. Red Jacobean lilies that Mum and I got from Nan’s garden. Nan has promised me some orange Tiger lilies as well as some white Christmas lilies.

Mum and I had also gathered other plants from Nan’s garden. An orange climber thing that has bell flowers and seems to be quite hardy, whether it gets eaten or not is another matter.

I have a bell shaped trellis thingy that I was originally going to set up out the front here over an Amy sized wading pool. I had planned to grow kiwi fruit over it and the idea was that Amy could eat kiwi fruit whilst she was paddling in the pool. The kiwi fruit turned out to be the sookiest, thirstiest plants ever and the wallabies adored them. Oh well, the best laid plans…

So I will put the trellis thingy over the frog pond and grow the orange climber up it, along with a lovely white, super smelly, honeysuckle. The small honey-eaters will love it. There is a bird bath down at Mum’s that I am sure was a gift from one of her brothers. I will add that into the mix as well.

I am going to buy some mushroom compost and sheep poo this week and then I can make a start. That is the plan so far. Stay tuned..

This is a Brown tree frog, Litoria ewingi.

If you look closely you can see that it still has its tail.

Click here to see more Wordless Wednesdays…

Yesterday I was a tad pissed off. Well actually I was more than a tad pissed off I was bloody irate. My child had been insulted and “The Lioness Within” was having bit of a stretch and showing her teeth.

This morning it was all good. The blogosphere had rallied round, Points had been made and spleens had been vented. Thank you very very much…

I would like to give these flowers to everyone that commented here or on Veronica’s post. Woohoo!!

Or if you are allergic to flowers there is always the Rocking Frog Star award. Because seriously you are all Frog Stars and you rock!!!

Take one, Take Both… Seriously take them both… I am going to be a grandmother again in Late January or early February. So I am in an exceptionally good mood today..

Cheers Kim

Yay it is Sunday again and apart from today being Mothers day it is also time to go over and visit  Lotus The Amazingly Sarcastic Mom.… YAY….    My  next post will be my 200th. I don’t have a clue what to write about at all. So any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

A Frog Pond, Full of spawn.
Another pond.
Yet another pond.

I thought that it is probably time that I explained my choice of name for my blog. Most blogs seem to have pretty self explanatory titles. Such as Why bother? Sleepless nights or Sarcastic mom. Mine is Frog ponds rock… Mmm a new type of music? Rocky frogstars? Wobbly ponds?

Frogs are under threat.They are rapidly declining all over the world. Whole species of frogs are just vanishing. pffft just like that. Gone. Our grandchildren wont be catching those tadpoles. So I decided to see if I could entice a few frogs into my yard by making a frogpond. I used one of those clamshell sandpit thingys and it worked a treat.

So now, in some circles I am known as the frog lady. I was the one that could be relied upon to supply the local Kindy with tadpoles (whilst my son was at primary school at least.) Unfortunately with the fungal chytrid disease affecting frogs in some parts of Tassie I am all the more aware of the importance of making my garden a frog friendly space..

YAY FROG PONDS ROCK!!!!!