The Sparkle of early Autumn

Here at the end of the month, a sunny daybreak, chilly but still frost free creates sparkles from last night’s raindrops. Spiders’ webs create glittering barriers so intrinsically woven one turns back to seek another route rather than vandalise these works of art.

Toads

A few years ago the fence between my front and side garden collapsed. Gradually I created a burglar resistant replacement barrier from thorny hawthorn and rose prunings, densely leaved shrubs and other large pieces of plant material. In due course, ivy and honeysuckle rambled over the 8 ft pile to give it the semblance of a living hedge.
Last week, for reasons that I cannot now recollect, I decided to exchange this somewhat unorthodox garden feature with two 6' x 4' garden sheds set sideways on, united by a section of conventional fencing. In the process of removing the old material to a bonfire site I found an abandoned robin's nest, five foot above ground level built into a discarded Christmas tree. Inside, I discovered a large toad.
Since the start of a six year frog plague, at last I hope over, my garden has become home to an increasing number of flat toads, all closely resembling chunks of black mudstone.
I have always thought of toads as solitary creatures but recently when I lifted a brick pressed into the soil,I uncovered a cluster five toads, two full grown and three very small. I would have taken them for a family if I didn't know that toads desert their offspring once the males have fertilised the spawn. This ununusual sociability was probably a sympom of overcrowding. The toad I found in the nest probably couldn't find privacy at ground level.

Peace by the pond, at last.

I sat on my Thai garden chair and enjoyed my frog pond for the first time in at least four years.
The frog plague is over! For the last few years I have been scooping up at least fifty dead frogs with red skins and spawn has also come tinged with red.
Before that for several years there were so many frogs marching into the garden from all directions that although the pond is quite large for an urban garden there was more frog than water and so many males clung to each female that even healthy females drowned. Serenity was non-existent even if one coulld stomach the smell of decaying flesh.
This year, however, I saw no more than 12 frogs and had only two clusters of spawn. There are now many tadpoles swimming happily, at least they do while the sun shines. Under clouds cover they tend to stay dormant.
The occasional tadpole gets eaten by newts that zoom in on them like dinosaurs seen through the wrong end of a telescope but that is nature. I suppose red leg frog plague is also nature's way of reducing an oversized frog population but it smells far worse than death by predator!