toads Archives | Diana's Designs Austin

Frogs and toads and eggs in the garden — oh my!

We’re very fortunate to enjoy an abundance of wildlife in our garden. With an acre and a half – and about one third of it is natural woods — we see birds, deer, squirrels, foxes, road runners, coyotes and an abundance of lizards and frogs and toads.

I’ve enjoyed watching frogs and toads near one of our fountains and the pool over the course of this summer. I went out every day to see if someone was cooling off in the fountain. Last week, I let the dogs out at night and counted 16 Rio Grande leopard frogs in the pool at once! They jump in at night and are usually gone by morning. And I found a cluster of frog spawn in the pool. I scooped it out and carefully and slowly replaced the pool water with rain water from the tank over a period of about a day. Now I am refreshing the rain water daily.

They seem to be changing, the eggs becoming elongated as they begin the process of morphing into tadpoles. Several of my garden blogging friends with ponds want to adopt some of them, too! Fingers crossed that at least some of them make it.

Then last night I saw my first Green tree frog on the back wall of the house. This Hyla cinerea was just hanging out and didn’t move a muscle as Jeff took several pictures of him.

Isn’t he cute? This is definitely the year of the frogs and toads in our garden.

I’ve blogged about these guys several times over the last few months.

And an interloper toad came to the party for a while, as well.

A few years ago, I even had a whole family of toads squatting in a bag of potting soil. Scared me to death when I reached in for some soil!

It’s like having the National Geographic channel in our own back yard. I could spend hours watching our critter friends.

What critters do you enjoy in your garden?

By Diana C. Kirby|2017-11-29T23:26:58-06:00November 7th, 2015|Blog, fountain, frog eggs, frogs, Rio Grande leopard frog, Sharing Nature's Garden, toads, tree frog, wildlife|0 Comments

Frogs in the fountain…and some toads, too!

Since Jeff built this beautiful fountain for me a few months ago, I’ve spent a lot of time peering in behind the rocks to monitor the adventures of our resident frogs and toads. I feel like they’re pets (though I’m sure that THEY don’t feel that way).

It’s just perfect for this spot.

My favorite place to sit outside, the fountain bubbles and drips and makes beautiful music.

And it’s so inviting – a little cooling oasis in the middle of summer sun.

If you build it, they will come! Hello, Freddie Frog. Nice to meet you. A few days after Jeff built the fountain, it became the favorite summer water park of a couple of Rio Grande Leopard frogs. Even on 105 degree days and despite its being in the sun in the afternoon, the water in the fountain remained cool and inviting every day.

And thus began the saga of the slippery ones. I’d occasionally scare one hopping from plant to plant surrounding the fountain.

And as I was becoming more and more obsessed with them, I went on the hunt for them when they weren’t in the fountain.

There are two frogs enjoying our new water feature. Little Freddie, shown in the first two frog photos, and Frieda, above. I assume she is his mother, since he’s bright green and her coloring is more brown and the perfect camouflage for burrowing into my pots. Sometimes they are both in the fountain together, and sometimes they spend some quality alone time in the fountain.

Then came the TOAD….

And once he got in that fountain, he didn’t move. He’d spend days in there, seemingly in the same spot. A squatter – just daring the frogs to come back.

I missed my frogs, but came to like Tad, the toad, too. I’m not sure why I like frogs better than toads. Toads are lumpy and bumpy and look like they would feel icky to touch. Frogs are green and shiny and speckled and smooth and even though I wouldn’t touch them (there would be that girl screaming thing along with falling back onto the ground in terror thing), they just seem prettier.

When it rained last week, Tad the toad hopped out of the fountain to frolic wherever toads and frogs frolic. He must have stayed out past curfew, because after two days of an empty fountain, Frieda, the mom frog, is back. She’s just hanging out on this pretty almost-fall-like day.

I reached around to the back of the fountain with my iPhone to get this picture. They don’t mind my peeking around from the front, but every now and then the dogs like to see what’s going on in the fountain, so our hopping friends have taken up residence behind the rocks most of the time.

You can see some of the rocks are turning green. I’ve been very careful not to disturb the frogs and toads, but this week I am going to carefully remove those specific rocks and clean them by hand and rinse them and put them back into the fountain. I don’t put bleach in any of my outdoor water features — I certainly wouldn’t want even a few drops of that in my gin and tonic!

I love having more wildlife friends to enjoy in our landscape, so frog or toad, they’re all welcome here.

By Diana C. Kirby|2016-04-14T02:38:51-05:00September 13th, 2015|Blog, fountain, frog, Sharing Nature's Garden, toads, water feature, wildlife|0 Comments

Blooming beauties on bloom day

Most of my summer bloomers are all still blooming this Bloom Day. Carol, of May Dreams Gardens, encourages us to share our blooms on the 15th of each month, and mine are thrilled to be enjoying a reprieve from the summer’s heat and drought.

The rain has revived them all and they are blooming to their hearts’ content. Because they are the same plants that were barely blooming in September, I’m just going to highlight a few interesting things in the garden today.

Above is a fabulous bloom from my brand-new Bottle Brush tree. It’s a new addition to the bed where I removed an ugly cedar tree earlier this year.
The Turk’s Caps are all standing at attention with the rain renewal. And the cooler temps have really helped, too. Even though it was 92 and sticky today, we have had rain and cooler temps with nights into the high 50s. Fall is trying to show itself here.
I know this does’t qualify because it’s not blooming, but it makes me happy as a bloom would. It is new growth on the 3 new Heucheras I planted this spring. In just a few short months it will have beautiful blooms. So, today, I am celebrating the anticipation of blooms!
And the heady scent of blooms and the sweet rains must have brought romance to our garden toads, because I have hundreds of itty-bitty, teeny-weeny toad babies hopping all over my yard, garden, driveway, pathways … you name it, there are toads there!
I was trying to give you perspective — I failed! he’s about as big as my index fingernail, if that.
Isn’t he cute? Wanna adopt some?

By Diana C. Kirby|2017-11-29T23:27:38-06:00October 15th, 2009|Blog, Bottle Brush tree, GBBD, Heuchera, Sharing Nature's Garden, toads, Turk's cap|0 Comments

toads

Frogs and toads and eggs in the garden — oh my!

Frogs in the fountain…and some toads, too!

Blooming beauties on bloom day

Escape in the garden