Frogs, frogspawn & tadpoles

Yesterday the first tiny tadpoles appeared in the garden pond.

This prompted me to trawl through my Facebook archives to see when frogspawn has first appeared in my garden pond.  

Some years I mention it, others not, and some years 

I mention when the first tadpoles appear.

Isn’t the find function fun and useful!

 

8 March 2012 at 10:32: YAY We've got frogspawn in the pond :}

11 March 2012 at 09:46:  More frogspawn! They're really getting the hang of it ...

25 March 2012 at 12:46:Tadpoles !:o}

Sienna Pond When I first read that I saw 'topless'!!! I thort "Lordy I know Ben is a free spirit but my oh my!!" xx

 

18 April 2013 at 18:38:  Today's news from Chateau Midden

1. The lady of the house has overdone the catching up on washing/ironing etc and the hurty head and neck came back :(

2. We have some tiny tadpoles hatched from the first batch of frogspawn that spent some time under ice.

 

4 March 2014 at 23:05:  Frogs coupling in my pond this afternoon  

 

7 March 2015 at 13:13: We have frogspawn

 

2 March 2016 at 08:39:Frogspawn!

13 March 2017 at 08:25: Five frogs in pond yesterday, two clumps of frogspawn in the pond this morning.

3 April 2017 at 16:22 :There are tadpoles in the pond.

22 March 2018 at 14:37: The warm weather has made the frogs really jiggy.  There are 7 clumps of spawn, the most we’ve ever had.  Mrs Quilt is coming over to take a cupful for her water-feature.

28 April 2018 at 12:39:  Tadpoles!  We have tadpoles

20 March 2019 at 10:43:  Frogpond #1 has so much frogspawn there's enough to risk transplanting a blob into Frogpond #2.

16 April 2019 at 18:36: We have tadpoles

2020

Between caring for Ferretfingers’ broken ankle, our stay in hospital, my subsequent illness where I hardly made it downstairs for a week let alone to the end of the garden, I missed when the frogspawn appeared.

27 March 2020 at 16:08: I think we may have some tiny tadpoles

 

10 March 2021 08.44: Frogspawn

31 March 2021 16.46: First tadpoles out today, teenytiny things, so some of the frogspawn survived even though it vanished.

 

In summation

The earliest date we had frogspawn is 2^nd March, the latest 22^nd March.

The earliest tadpoles appeared was 25^th March, the latest 28^th April.

Frogspawn has taken between 17 and 37 days to hatch, an average of 25 days

 

Now aren't you glad you read  right to the bottom...

Chiropody

From Facebook archives, it’s sobering to think I am now seven years older than Mum was in this photo.

30 March 2014 at 11:21 ·

Here's my Mum (in 1976) relishing tormenting my older sister with tales of her trip to the chiropodist..  She's the same age as I am now ....

Tylebach  brilliant!!

Bentonbag  I know this isn't the prettiest picture of Mum, but it's the most characterful.

Tylebach  it's fab!

Bentonbag  Sister reckons Mum "really looks Irish" in this picture.  Anyone of Hibernian* descent care to comment?

 

 

*Bigbrother recently had one of those ancestry heredity tests done. 

He is and presumably we, his siblings, are 37% Irish.

Given that  his and sister-in-law’s family tree work indicates Mother’s paternal grandparents all originated from Northern Ireland (came over to Scotland and worked in Montrose linen mills), 

it’s hardly surprising she should look Irish.

And I see her almost every time I look in the mirror.

 

PS 

Apologies to Bigsister who hates seeing photographs of herself, almost as much as she hates feet.  At this point in the conversation Mother had just described having some yellow disinfectant dressing “wound round and round my little toe”, following a detailed account of how corns and bits of hard skin had been scraped off with a small scalpel and other implements.

 

One Year On

August 2010, taken by Ferretfingers

For most of March 2020 I blogged every day to keep family and friends informed of Ferretfingers’ recovery and recuperation from his broken ankle.

The day Lockdown started he managed to make it up the stairs into his own bed, and into and out of the bath.   

Which meant the wonderful washers from Comfort Care could be relieved from their duties, and the commode, wheelchair and person mover we’d borrowed could be taken away again.  This minimised the number of people coming and going out of the house to just us four.

Kind friends mentioned how much they looked forward to the email alerting them to my blog.

Some live alone, but as everybody had limited company and amusement; I decided to blog daily until this present unpleasantness is over.

I archive my blogs in Word documents:  there was Hospital Log, Recuperation Log then Lockdown Log1 - first entry 29 March 2020.   

We are now on Lockdown Log 12, and I’m proud to say I’ve only missed four days.   

That was when we managed to get away to a caravan in Northumberland during that short time such things were allowed.

From the start I’ve relied on Facebook entries, some current but increasingly from archives.

As well as the e-alert I also put links to new bloggings on Facebook and Twitter.

In the past year Tales of Chateau Midden has had 27,100 viewings; that’s an average of 75 per day.

The Top Ten blogs (by viewing figures) are

 

Thank You Stand, 4 April 2020  (266)

Shopping Trip Treat,  2 April 2020  (193)

Say That Again, 7 April 2020  (149)

Goodbye Washers, 1 April 2020  (136)

Jab Done, 26 January 2021  (131)

The Skinny Dip That Wasn't, 22 September 2020  (129)

Locks Lopped, 4 July 2020  (124)

Death of a Hudl, 28 September 2020   (123)

Good Friday Thoughts, 10 April 2020  (123)

Fester Builds A Raised Bed, 5 April 2020 (115)

 

Every bedtime Fester asks “Have you got your deathless prose ready for tomorrow?”...

and almost every morning I’m up before him to get it uploaded before breakfast.

It has helped give some structure to my days.

And I’m afraid it will have to carry on doing so for the foreseeable future.

I hope my blogs are helping to keep you amused.

If they are, or even if they’re not, feel free to share the link with your Facebook friends, Twitter followers or even people you know in the real world.

Cloth Ears

From Facebook archive, and today

28 March 2020 at 14:04 ·

"I had Keith Floyd on the telly this morning, he was in Llandybie, and he pronounced it correctly*."
“How would you know?”
"Because you've told me how, often and at considerable length."

I've never quite forgotten, or forgiven, him calling it 

Lan-dee-by. 

It's not a place I'm particularly fond of but it's the principal of the thing.

Mr Earth  Things have principles?

PH  It's so difficult though. Many place names can't be worked out from mere spellings.

Bentonbag  Perhaps, but he'd heard me say it plenty of times.   

This may be racist but I'm afraid the majority of the monoglot English simply don't listen

I've just read this out to him and he said "Good God yes. That's not racist. That's just true."

 

*Llan-duh-bee-yeh.  Llan (as in llan), duh as in dumb, bee as in sting, yeh as in yet

 

A particular bete-noir of mine, and possibly most people brought up in Wales, is the English’s seeming inability to pronounce ll; found at the start of innumerable Welsh place names.  

Yet they manage the same sound in the middle of Llanelli. 

It is not Clan or Flan but Llan.   

In my experience Irish, Scots, French, Spanish and other nationalities have no problem with it.

According to the Collins-Spurrel Welsh Dictionary ll is “produced by placing the tongue to pronounce l, then emitting breath without voice.”    

Try it, gently, it’s not hard, nor is it necessary to cover your surroundings in spittle when doing it.

 

There was once an agonizing three-day-live Time Team Special digging up a Roman Fort at Llandeilo, the town nearest to where I was brought up.  Tony Robinson and Carenza Lewis insisted on calling it Landy-low or Lan-dillow (rhyming with pillow) but never Lan-die-lo (rhymes with lilo).   The presenters must have been staying in the town (it has some lovely hotels) and had meetings with the locals, but seemingly hadn't heard or bothered to pick up the correct pronounciation.

 

As my English (Geordie) mother would have said “Have they got cloth ears?”