Cooling Off Amphibian Style

Good morning. Tina here on the first day of summer.  It is hot here in Kelsey.

Luna likes to get out first thing in the morning and check for gophers.  It is nice and cool then, and the dried weeds and stickers don't seem so bad.

It has been so hot, you could fry an egg on the sidewalk.  We don't have sidewalks here in Kelsey, so we have to settle for a fried egg plant (matilija poppy) instead.

Heat wave... that means a lot of watering.  Every other day (perhaps every day later in the summer) I am out dragging the hose around watering the plants on the porch and deck, especially the hanging plants, which dry out faster than the others.

A little visitor, who tells me her name is Fanny Frog, has come to stay in a pot on the front porch.  She has requested every day watering.

It is so refreshing to have her own little private pond.

Far from the madding crowd. And the cats.

The view from her penthouse is fantastic.

I asked her if she ever gets lonely up living up there on the edge.

Yes, she replied, but she has invited her friend Timothy Toad to come and dangle his toes in her pond someday, so to speak.

Timothy lives around the corner on the south side, on the wrong side of town, next to the compost heap.

Fanny's family isn't too thrilled about their relationship, so he doesn't get out to see her much. She has never been down to his level.

Timothy doesn't mind the heat as much as Fanny does, but he does like an occasional mud bath, and he has his own hot tub.  He does, however, need my help to fill it.

He gets a lot of thinking done in there, kind of day-dreaming about his star-crossed romance and the sweet, slippery, long-toed beauty who loves to snack on mosquitoes and watch the sunset from her perch on a nasturtium leaf. 

Ahhh...  Ain't summer grand.

The rest of us basically get our work done in the early morning when it is still cool, following Luna's example.

After that, when the heat rises and the sun beats down, we do what any overheated, tired mammal does when the chores are finished, lunch is eaten, and the eye-lids start drooping.

We settle down for a long, summer's nap.

And, checking in on that industrious Luna, as I finished this blog at 8:10 am, I heard a strange crunching noise just outside the screen door.  I went to check, and there was Luna enjoying her breakfast of fresh-caught gopher. Good girl, Luna!