The green frog tadpoles that overwintered in our pond are getting legs, mostly back legs at this point. Meanwhile, adult females are laying small eggs in big masses. It takes a year to make a green frog.

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Yesterday’s thunderstorm brought an inch of rain to the village about 2 miles from here and just a fleeting dampness here. An unwelcome but not unfamiliar occurrence.
Toads in the garden and in the lawn. It’s time to do some mowing, but toads come first.
As of 11 a.m. this morning, the storm has dumped 26 inches of snow in Dorset.
Nice warm weather has gotten carpenter ant queens up and about. Lots of winged females looking to start a new colony in any rotting wood that’s lying around.
The leaves of sugar maple seedlings don’t look at all like maple leaves. They have no lobes or very small lobes at best. You can see the seed leaves, the cotyledons, below. Last year’s seedlings are very small but they have maple shaped leaves – and no cotyledons. Plenty of both this year.
Insect frass all over your picnic table this year? You’re not alone. Matt Ayers, an ecologist at Dartmouth is happy to see them. He writes that caterpillar abundance fluctuates by 20-fold, depending on the year. It’s all good, not an outbreak, and many different species of caterpillar are providing food for birds this year.
If you have a flashlight and a bit more patience than I have, I think you could see squash plants grow. Overnight they leapt through the garden fence and onto the grass.
The hot, hot weather in late May took a toll on apple blossoms. They seem to have opened up on one day and disappeared the next. Of course, my sense of time, and most everyone else’s, may be a bit off, due to isolation and discombobulation.