Frogs and Front Porches and All Good Things Mundane....

Well dear world....here I sit, befuddled by life, again..... nothing earth shaking or of great moment...just my usual 'off in la la land' state....trying to work....

On the bright side, we have all sorts of baby frogs around the pond....little green frogs...most of them are brown, with just a bright green line by their lips....do frogs have lips?...anyway, a bright green line runs across their faces, near their mouths...

A couple of them are only a little more than an inch long...and a couple of them are 'croakers'...does that mean they're males? Who knows?

I just like sitting and watching them watch me....

I finally went and bought all the stuff to rebuild the front porch....hopefully that means it will actually happen...but who knows, it could all just sit piled on the deck for a year or two...wouldn't be the first time.....

I went to a local lumber yard. I could probably have saved a few dollars going to Lowe's or Home Depot, but I'd rather give my money to a local business when I can.

I'm excited. We're going to replace the big round columns with more victorian looking posts and fancier railings....it's been a long time coming...just never enough money....always some other urgent something....oh well....David's friend Eric and his brother have a pretty reputable home improvement business and they are going to do the work....with David and Josh and I as laborers...that should be a hoot!!!!!!

Next paycheck has to go for the mortgage and other bills, but then the next one can pay to repair the porch roof and then the front of the house will be in good shape. Next year I have to replace the whole roof on the house...that will be a monster. Going to start saving to do that right after Christmas. Hopefully I'll be able to save enough to have the chimney rebuilt, too...it's in pretty rough shape. I can see bricks starting to crumble...and it is listing pretty visibly...good thing no one here is expecting Santa....

I love my yard. In the front everything is pretty "normal". We just took out several dwarf pines along the front...and some sort of prickly ever green bush type stuff near the driveway. So it''s looking barren. But as soon as the porch is complete than I'll replant in those areas...and by next year the rhodes that I cut way back in front of the porch will have started to fill-in , again..

But then you get to the back yard....that's my wonderland!!!...It's almost jungle like....I have plants and flowers everywhere...no part of the season, from early April until mid-October is without color and blooms!!! Here's a picture I took last week from an upstairs bedroom window...You can sorta get a bit of the jungle flavor!...I LOVE IT!!!!!

You can't really tell from the picture, but it is a good sized yard...for in town, anyway...it's about 120 feet deep from the back door to the property line, and it's about fifty feet across....

The pond, which is way, way at the back looks like nothing in this picture, but it is 15X12...

This might give you a better sense of how large it is...





Anyway, my backyard is my sanctuary...it's where I can escape the world.....the waterfall makes a wonderful, light noise...there are always birds chirping and singing...often other critters visit...

I go through ten lbs. of roasted peanuts a week feeding the squirels...and another fifty lbs. of bird seed....

I think some of the fish may be getting sick, again...I'm seeing signs of tail rot, and the little black comet died very unexpectedly, on Monday. When I was able to look at him up close, he had some of the hemorragic stuff going on....so I'm going to start the anti-bacterial, anti-fungal treatment again....

The koi have decimated all of the floating plants...I've put them into a wading pool to try and get some life going in them...I don't know why...if I put them back in the pond, they'll just have all their roots eaten...












These are pics I took a few minutes ago...These guys are all at least six inches long and some are up to ten inches...they only look small because I was standing directly over them.....

Anyway, they're fun...alot more expensive than I would ever have thought...but fun...and most of them will eat out of my hand, now....so I've become 'Mama' to a bunch of carp...whodda thunk?????


So...life goes on.....I've been testy lately, with lots of folks...so I've gotta work on making amends....not a task I'm particularly good at....


oops...almost forgot...I took a picture of David a couple of weeks ago when he decided to climb the tree in front of the house and hang out over the street....literally....and I wanted to share that pic.....

And on this note...I'm off to get some work done......