When it's wet... the frogs come out!

April was the wettest for a hundred years, so we weren't really able to get into the garden at all.
But plenty of joy came from watching tadpoles grow. A tiny bit of the frogspawn that appeared unexpectedly in the pond at the end of February was transferred to a small tank in our kitchen and we watched them grow up inside - much, much quicker than the ones left in the pond, presumably because it was much warmer - all through the month.

This was the frogspawn at the end of February:

A week or so later, these little aliens came out:

Another week or so, and they had bodies and guts full of food...

... which rather grossly trailed around with them... (but check out the mouths)...

After another week or so, they looked great, but a surprise appearance in the garden suggested possible family members had come for a visit:

Another eight days, and two features were clearly visible: big eyes and little back legs, along with a long, slender tail...

As time went on, the legs got more defined (like hands, actually), and then froggier...

Then the front legs came out... and they really started looking like frogs. But this all happened at very different speeds for different frogs; even though they all lived in the same conditions, some grew far faster than others.

But I woke one morning to a tragedy that made me feel very glum; I hadn't realised that they start needing to breathe air long before their back legs have grown and their tails gone - and some drowned out of the blue one night, due to my failure to provide rocks for them to climb out and sit on. I'm ashamed of this.

But there were plenty of successes still, and they continued to grow more frog-like as April moved on...

Once their tails had gone, they started sitting on the rocks all the time, statuesque and proud. It was time to release them back into the pond. And then, another couple of weeks later, a seemingly slightly older cousin popped by in the garden and consented to pose on my arm to show us what the finished product might look like:

And then today, in the pond, an even bigger specimen, but still young. Markings a bit different so may not be related. Meanwhile, still plenty of tadpoles in the pond with it, so, hopefully, lots more frogs to come!