It was a day I'd hoped wouldn't come to pass with all our water changing and tadpole care. I was a tad depressed this morning to fish out a few dead tadpoles and 3 apparently drowned froglets (even though Isaac had carefully provided perches and routes out of the water for them). Had they been overfed? Was it natural selection or overcrowding in an artificial environment? Maybe with the heatwave there wasn't enough water. I felt awful that most conservation advice was not to move the frogspawn in the first place and that I hadn't turned down the tadpole gift. Later I consoled myself that there is natural high tadpole mortality in the wild and we'd tried our best. We went to stream on a rescue mission with just baby as 30+ tadpole lives depended on it. Eventually I decided upon a 2 wash basin supplement to fish tank as with the heatwave there was not enough oxygenated water for them. This has since far worked well. There was hardly anyone at the stream and just birds singing so I dipped my toes in the water and let the baby splash his feet. Some of my sombre mood ebbed away into nature. A lady walking her dog stopped and saw us at one with the stream. "More mums should do that" I nodded and decided not to over-share the rescue mission nature of us visiting the stream. Later in the day I carried out the butterfly survey after school with Isaac. Marbled Whites newly emerged. I spotted Ringlet butterflies too. Isaac was suncreamed to maximum effect and full of energy and goodwill even after a full day at pre-school. We shared an icecream after our butterfly search. It was a good end to a scorching and suffocating day.
In the morning I took my youngest child to the aquatic section of a garden centre and purchased 2 large bunches of oxygenating pondweed. I didn't go and take any from a wild pond because I was afraid of my nearly-toddling child falling in. As the tadpole situation was improving with the measures taken and the hottest day ever was forecast I went onwards to collect more stream water. This time taking Isaac and baby for picnic. It was indeed a very hot day. We all dipped in water. Arthur caught purple flowers he found bobbing in the stream near where we paddled. It was beautiful. We filled our wash basins. Life was good again.
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| Isaac with our tadpole water containers replenished with good clean water |
I counted out 15 tadpoles in tank and one basin with Isaac. We could see which tadpoles were losing their tales and becoming froglets. My oldest was off School with a bug. It was a long, tiring day but there was a moment to appreciate the new roses in bloom in our garden.
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| My youngest two in the late afternoon rays of sunshine. At one with the garden picking Campanula flowers |
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| First roses that bloomed for Father's Day |
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| Munstead Wood my absolute favourite rose |
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| A flash back to earlier in year when we'd planted bare root roses and were waiting for growth. |
It is a good end to a difficult week of parenting.2 froglets are released into my friend's pond where there are plenty of plants for them to climb to edge. My friend has never seen a froglet in all her life and her children are also impressed. Her pond is walking distance from our tadpole tank but we stop every 5 minutes to check the froglets are ok. on their final trip via container at bottom of pushchair.
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