A few weeks ago, I visited a friend’s house in Freestone, an off-the-grid home powered by solar. Walking the grounds, I admired a beautiful, vigorous artichoke plant that I wished was in my yard. (I have smaller plants which are frequently attacked by gophers.) This picture makes the artichoke look even bigger, as I shot from below, looking up the hill at it.
They also had a small stone-walled pond near their house. Inside it were clusters of frog eggs, so called frogspawn (look it up in wikipedia). You can see them near the center bottom of the photo below. It won’t be long before there are tadpoles swimming in the pond.
The tadpoles will develop into night-singing Pacific Tree Frogs.
Dale Dougherty 