Thanks, Terry, And, ooooh, lugworms! Not a very pretty name, but I'm sure they are delightful characters. 🪱 (I'm not sure I've ever met one.)
It's astonishing, isn't it, that a whole palette of pondlife seems to just appear out of nowhere when a new pond is dug and filled? Tis a mystery - nature is amazing!
Would you please introduce me to the 'non-biting midge', Terry? Any and all midges that I've ever met have NOT read THAT brief......!
I'd thought that lugworms were the things that I sometimes see fishermen digging for on the beach at low tide. I clearly need to brush up on my worm facts! They're probably called something-else-worms. I'll ask, next time I see one. (Fisherman, not worm.)
Thank you so much, Jillian! I'm so grateful for the environment I grew up in, and it means such a lot to me now that my parents still live in that same house. My pond is long gone, but there is still plenty of frog life around and about thanks to the pond they have now. 🐸
What a beautiful gift, that pond but also the life lived near nature - and the frog sketch is so lovely! 🐸🪷 So enjoying the evolution of your art book, too.
I'm so grateful to have had such a close relationship with nature growing up, Bryn. I felt sometimes that we were a bit of an oddball family, being pretty much self-sufficient with growing food, and spending so much time outside when many of my school friends entertained themselves with less nature-driven activities, but I loved it at the time, and so pleased now that I've got wonderful things like that to look back on!
Happy sigh. I have similar memories. (In Australia, wellies are known as ‘gumboots’.) I adored tadpoles. And I adore your art. So beautiful. Thanks so much for sharing. 🤗🤗😘😘
Thank you for this beautiful comment, Beth! I love 'gumboots' - I've heard wellies called that over here sometimes, but not often. We have the Duke of Wellington to thank for our 'wellies'!
I meant to tell you on Monday last week that I'd posted your prize-draw book to you! To my disappointment, when I got back from the post office I found the ribbon that I'd meant to tie around it still on my desk. Oh well! 🙄
Love this post as it had me back in the land of childhood memories, too, of growing up with a giant maple tree woods with pond right behind my home, the very best place to explore. Your childhood sounds so lovely and idyllic. Where can I buy your book? "You want it, you carry it" is perfect: for the library, the grocery, the thrift store, walks! Read this one while drinking my morning coffee. Your art is beautiful.
'You want it, you carry it' was such an excellent rule - for one thing it trained me to not collect every single pretty stone from every beach I went to! Learned that the hard way, though. There's another story there, absolutely!
I had such fun with the art - to my surprise and delight I found the reference pictures I used to show the life cycle of the frog IN the nature book I'm using as my art journal for this series of posts! So, I'm afraid the tadpoles and the frog are pretty close copies of R. Stuurman's original art from the book, although laid out differently - but the welly art is my own work, I promise!
Your 'pocket of shade' artwork yesterday absolutely made my day! Wonderful!
One of my fondest memories of being a dad is taking my young kids out to the swamp to get frogspawn for them to take into class for science. Lovely story, as usual.
Oh Tom, that's so lovely to know! What a great experience to share with your kids!
In my first three or so years at school there was a 'nature table' in the classroom, and there would be great excitement whenever someone brought in something new and special to put onto it. Some I remember were a beautiful fuzzy green and blue caterpillar that we'd found on a cherry tree - we took that to school just for the day, in a jamjar of cherry tree leaves and plenty of air holes, taking it home to release later; a dead mole with a v-shaped injury, having been bitten by an adder (the UK's only venomous snake), brought in by a farmer's son classmate; hatched-out pigeon eggshells, a dead starfish, a carrot that had grown into the shape of a stick-man - those were all such great treasures!
My parents’ house backs onto a rather rocky, wild ditch. No tadpoles there, though. But my elementary school backed into a marsh, and many a happy lunch hour was spent catching tadpoles and avoiding the summons of teachers to get out of the marsh and the woods. Glorious days!
Oh, what a lovely experience to have had as part of your school life, Alison! Imagining your teachers calling you back inside, telling you 'get out of the marsh and the woods' has made me laugh and also realise how times have changed now; how these days children are being encouraged to get back to nature, rather than being discouraged from playing in the marsh and the woods as you had been! Forest School is such a big thing over here now - whereas when I was at school in the 80s and 90s it was all very much about being in the classroom in an entirely formal learning environment.
It was a constant battle, teachers wanting students to return to the open schoolyard, and kids wanting to play in the woods and marsh. I wandered up there not long ago, and the woods and marsh are mostly gone; just new houses behind a small strip of what’s left. I wish Forest School had been a thing then, we had such a good opportunity for that.
I think (well, I hope!) that housing developers around here are now making (or are being told to make!) efforts to preserve meaningful pockets of nature in between what they're building. I hope there are still some frogs and tadpoles left in that small strip of marsh that's left!
After I finished reading this beaut I was searching for the “love” button. Wait, that sounds dirty. But you know what I mean. You’ve sent me hurtling back in time, and taught me a word (frogspawn) that eclipses the poor tools we were using to describe same, in southern Connecticut (frogs eggs--how pedestrian). (Not sure I prefer the German, actually, which--as usual--sounds like a curse.) But oh those childhood rambles, the mystery of a life outside, the dizzying life cycles, the dear parents who offer it up, saying “look how amazing all this is!” And “we’ll put the frogspawn in your welly!” A parent can’t do better for a child than that.
Awwwww Peter, I do know what you mean - thank you and LOL!
How interesting that you don't use the word 'frogspawn' - but of course 'frogs' eggs' does absolutely hit the nail on the head!
That frogspawn in the welly experience was certainly one of those lovely rites of passage, a tick in the box of things you have to do before you get to qualify as a fully-fledged adult. Now I come to think of it, my brother missed out on that score! 🤣
What a fun story to read this morning. And I love "if you want it, you carry it." It brought up memories of hunting for frogs in the pond behind my childhood farm. Always so much fun to spot and then even better catch one. :) Have a great weekend Rebecca.
You're so kind, Julie - thank you! Yes, that family rule still stands today - I have more stories to tell about 'if you want it, you carry it!'
So glad that you enjoyed meeting frogs too, when you were little! It's experiences like that that mean so much to me so many years on. 🐸
You have a great weekend, too! In fact it's already Sunday when I'm typing this, but we've still got plenty of time to make the most of this glorious weather! 🌞
You have sparked memories of explorations of the pond near my childhood home. Yes, it is fascinating to see the evolution of the tadpoles from little "commas" to full amphibian and your artwork details it beautifully. Did you have turtles? our pond was loaded with painted turtles and the occasional fearsome Snapping turtle. Do you have snapping turtles in the UK?
Thanks so much, Jim - and yes, that whole metamorphosis from taddy to froglet is absolutely amazing!
We don't have any native turtles over here. There was a craze for keeping terrapins (freshwater turtles) as pets when the whole Teenage Mutant thing started - but I think there are restrictions on owning those now thanks to so many being released into the wild once the fashion for them waned. I had a friend whose family kept tortoises - I think across the pond you call those turtles, too, right? - basically a herbivorous, land-living 'turtle'.
Snapping turtles don't sound like something I'd like to meet! I've just Googled them - to my horror I gather there ARE some small populations round and about, having escaped or been released from their lives as pets. Gosh.
Interesting, I didn't know that there were no native turtles in England. I spent most of my life in the northeast US but now that I live in south Florida, instead of frogs and turtles, it's gators and iguanas.
Oh my goodness, you are reminding me of my own childhood memories, tadpoles, what excitement they held for us! And I have a very old memory of going frogging with my dad, in the early morning hours when it was still dark out, or at least that's how I remember it. I don't remember having those cool boots, but I did have some type of rain boot which I would wear when my girlfriend and I would walk/stomp in the gutters up and down the streets. These activities would keep us all busy for hours. How lucky were we to grow up in such a simple time. Thanks, Rebecca, for sharing these stories. And I LOVE your artwork! 💜
Sue, I'm so glad you got so much out of my post - thank you for such very kind words! Your own froggie memories have been lovely to read - and yes yes yes to stomping in the gutters in wellies!
I had such fun with the artwork - although I had a bit of trouble getting the right shade of blue for my wellies! Got there in the end, though! 🤣
Your stories, Rebecca, read like a favorite song. Your cherished memories become my cherished memories for a time -- they make me remember things I've never even experienced! I re-stacked this lovely piece with these comments this morning.
Oh Sharron, you're so very kind - I love that you're adopting my memories - that's what it's all about! Thank you for such beautiful words - I really appreciate them, and I really appreciate you! 😊
About the wellies (called gumboots here) but especially the taddies.
My early life l;ike yours was filled with the charm of tadpoles and frogs and we spent much time with huge jars filled with spawn which was tipped back into wetlands as soon as the legs appeared. I also loved finding frogs in my grandmother's garden, tiny creamy-coloured things with a black dorsal stripe. But the lovely swampy public area where we used to find frogs and spawn has now been developed (I hate society some times) and I think of all those future frogs whose home was decimated.
Fortunatley, not far from that bogland, my friends huge garden has been very damp with La Nina over the last three years and for the last three years it's boomed and warbled with many frogs. A good sign. The same on our farm, which over six or seven years of drought had become very quiet but within months of the Big Wet, had become a frogland orchestra again. I love that nature can bounce back if given a chance.
You always spark memories for me, Rebecca. I'm grateful. XXXX
Prue, thank you so much, and I'm delighted to hear your own memories of taddies and frogs! Tasmanian frogs sound so pretty - cream with a black stripe - our frogs over here are mottled and in shades of brown, and some are yellowy, some are greeny. Not bright yellow or green, but yellow/brown, greeny/brown. Pretty in their own way!
'Frogland orchestra' - what a wonderful expression! 🙌
I had to laugh at your welly being used for the frogspawn. I'm sure as a kid, you were very upset about that. Here you have some welly's that you cherish and now they're being used for a purpose they are not intended for.
I like your artwork. Great job!
I have a frog story but it's not from a pond. When I lived in my house, I had a section of the front lawn that had plants surrounded by railroad ties. There was red mulch put down over the whole area. One day, some of the mulch was moved. I thought I saw a small piece of garbage that had been blown over to the spot. I leaned down to grab it when I hesitated. It was not garbage. It had eyes. It was a large frog. I'm glad I didn't put my hand down there. I probably would have jumped and maybe screamed or yelled. 🤣
Very delightful. We have lugworms in our tiny pond (identified by E), and what amazes me is: how do they (or rather their parents) know it's there?
Thanks, Terry, And, ooooh, lugworms! Not a very pretty name, but I'm sure they are delightful characters. 🪱 (I'm not sure I've ever met one.)
It's astonishing, isn't it, that a whole palette of pondlife seems to just appear out of nowhere when a new pond is dug and filled? Tis a mystery - nature is amazing!
Yes! E informs me that they are the larvae of non-biting midges. I think Nature exemplifies the idea of "build it and they will come".
Would you please introduce me to the 'non-biting midge', Terry? Any and all midges that I've ever met have NOT read THAT brief......!
I'd thought that lugworms were the things that I sometimes see fishermen digging for on the beach at low tide. I clearly need to brush up on my worm facts! They're probably called something-else-worms. I'll ask, next time I see one. (Fisherman, not worm.)
Nuffink to do wiv me, mate. I don't know anything about lug worms
What an absolute gift to have grown up in such proximity to nature! And those baby tadpoles!! Love your drawings, as always!
Thank you so much, Jillian! I'm so grateful for the environment I grew up in, and it means such a lot to me now that my parents still live in that same house. My pond is long gone, but there is still plenty of frog life around and about thanks to the pond they have now. 🐸
I love that your parents still live in the same house! Such lovely continuity! And I'm glad you can still visit the frogs!
It's amazing, isn't it? I'm so pleased about that. I live elsewhere now, but that house is very much still home, and I get to visit often! 😊
What a beautiful gift, that pond but also the life lived near nature - and the frog sketch is so lovely! 🐸🪷 So enjoying the evolution of your art book, too.
I'm so grateful to have had such a close relationship with nature growing up, Bryn. I felt sometimes that we were a bit of an oddball family, being pretty much self-sufficient with growing food, and spending so much time outside when many of my school friends entertained themselves with less nature-driven activities, but I loved it at the time, and so pleased now that I've got wonderful things like that to look back on!
And thank you for such kind words! 🐸
A treasure, Rebecca, as always.
So kind, Mark! Thank you! 😊
Happy sigh. I have similar memories. (In Australia, wellies are known as ‘gumboots’.) I adored tadpoles. And I adore your art. So beautiful. Thanks so much for sharing. 🤗🤗😘😘
Thank you for this beautiful comment, Beth! I love 'gumboots' - I've heard wellies called that over here sometimes, but not often. We have the Duke of Wellington to thank for our 'wellies'!
I meant to tell you on Monday last week that I'd posted your prize-draw book to you! To my disappointment, when I got back from the post office I found the ribbon that I'd meant to tie around it still on my desk. Oh well! 🙄
Love this post as it had me back in the land of childhood memories, too, of growing up with a giant maple tree woods with pond right behind my home, the very best place to explore. Your childhood sounds so lovely and idyllic. Where can I buy your book? "You want it, you carry it" is perfect: for the library, the grocery, the thrift store, walks! Read this one while drinking my morning coffee. Your art is beautiful.
Oh Mary, your very kind words have made my day!
'You want it, you carry it' was such an excellent rule - for one thing it trained me to not collect every single pretty stone from every beach I went to! Learned that the hard way, though. There's another story there, absolutely!
I had such fun with the art - to my surprise and delight I found the reference pictures I used to show the life cycle of the frog IN the nature book I'm using as my art journal for this series of posts! So, I'm afraid the tadpoles and the frog are pretty close copies of R. Stuurman's original art from the book, although laid out differently - but the welly art is my own work, I promise!
Your 'pocket of shade' artwork yesterday absolutely made my day! Wonderful!
One of my fondest memories of being a dad is taking my young kids out to the swamp to get frogspawn for them to take into class for science. Lovely story, as usual.
Oh Tom, that's so lovely to know! What a great experience to share with your kids!
In my first three or so years at school there was a 'nature table' in the classroom, and there would be great excitement whenever someone brought in something new and special to put onto it. Some I remember were a beautiful fuzzy green and blue caterpillar that we'd found on a cherry tree - we took that to school just for the day, in a jamjar of cherry tree leaves and plenty of air holes, taking it home to release later; a dead mole with a v-shaped injury, having been bitten by an adder (the UK's only venomous snake), brought in by a farmer's son classmate; hatched-out pigeon eggshells, a dead starfish, a carrot that had grown into the shape of a stick-man - those were all such great treasures!
My parents’ house backs onto a rather rocky, wild ditch. No tadpoles there, though. But my elementary school backed into a marsh, and many a happy lunch hour was spent catching tadpoles and avoiding the summons of teachers to get out of the marsh and the woods. Glorious days!
Oh, what a lovely experience to have had as part of your school life, Alison! Imagining your teachers calling you back inside, telling you 'get out of the marsh and the woods' has made me laugh and also realise how times have changed now; how these days children are being encouraged to get back to nature, rather than being discouraged from playing in the marsh and the woods as you had been! Forest School is such a big thing over here now - whereas when I was at school in the 80s and 90s it was all very much about being in the classroom in an entirely formal learning environment.
It was a constant battle, teachers wanting students to return to the open schoolyard, and kids wanting to play in the woods and marsh. I wandered up there not long ago, and the woods and marsh are mostly gone; just new houses behind a small strip of what’s left. I wish Forest School had been a thing then, we had such a good opportunity for that.
I think (well, I hope!) that housing developers around here are now making (or are being told to make!) efforts to preserve meaningful pockets of nature in between what they're building. I hope there are still some frogs and tadpoles left in that small strip of marsh that's left!
After I finished reading this beaut I was searching for the “love” button. Wait, that sounds dirty. But you know what I mean. You’ve sent me hurtling back in time, and taught me a word (frogspawn) that eclipses the poor tools we were using to describe same, in southern Connecticut (frogs eggs--how pedestrian). (Not sure I prefer the German, actually, which--as usual--sounds like a curse.) But oh those childhood rambles, the mystery of a life outside, the dizzying life cycles, the dear parents who offer it up, saying “look how amazing all this is!” And “we’ll put the frogspawn in your welly!” A parent can’t do better for a child than that.
Awwwww Peter, I do know what you mean - thank you and LOL!
How interesting that you don't use the word 'frogspawn' - but of course 'frogs' eggs' does absolutely hit the nail on the head!
That frogspawn in the welly experience was certainly one of those lovely rites of passage, a tick in the box of things you have to do before you get to qualify as a fully-fledged adult. Now I come to think of it, my brother missed out on that score! 🤣
What a fun story to read this morning. And I love "if you want it, you carry it." It brought up memories of hunting for frogs in the pond behind my childhood farm. Always so much fun to spot and then even better catch one. :) Have a great weekend Rebecca.
You're so kind, Julie - thank you! Yes, that family rule still stands today - I have more stories to tell about 'if you want it, you carry it!'
So glad that you enjoyed meeting frogs too, when you were little! It's experiences like that that mean so much to me so many years on. 🐸
You have a great weekend, too! In fact it's already Sunday when I'm typing this, but we've still got plenty of time to make the most of this glorious weather! 🌞
I agree and it's fun to write about the fun childhood memories now as an adult. Happy Sunday and enjoy the glorious weather. :)
You have sparked memories of explorations of the pond near my childhood home. Yes, it is fascinating to see the evolution of the tadpoles from little "commas" to full amphibian and your artwork details it beautifully. Did you have turtles? our pond was loaded with painted turtles and the occasional fearsome Snapping turtle. Do you have snapping turtles in the UK?
Thanks so much, Jim - and yes, that whole metamorphosis from taddy to froglet is absolutely amazing!
We don't have any native turtles over here. There was a craze for keeping terrapins (freshwater turtles) as pets when the whole Teenage Mutant thing started - but I think there are restrictions on owning those now thanks to so many being released into the wild once the fashion for them waned. I had a friend whose family kept tortoises - I think across the pond you call those turtles, too, right? - basically a herbivorous, land-living 'turtle'.
Snapping turtles don't sound like something I'd like to meet! I've just Googled them - to my horror I gather there ARE some small populations round and about, having escaped or been released from their lives as pets. Gosh.
Interesting, I didn't know that there were no native turtles in England. I spent most of my life in the northeast US but now that I live in south Florida, instead of frogs and turtles, it's gators and iguanas.
I think I'd prefer frogs and turtles to gators and iguanas...!!! 😲
Oh my goodness, you are reminding me of my own childhood memories, tadpoles, what excitement they held for us! And I have a very old memory of going frogging with my dad, in the early morning hours when it was still dark out, or at least that's how I remember it. I don't remember having those cool boots, but I did have some type of rain boot which I would wear when my girlfriend and I would walk/stomp in the gutters up and down the streets. These activities would keep us all busy for hours. How lucky were we to grow up in such a simple time. Thanks, Rebecca, for sharing these stories. And I LOVE your artwork! 💜
Sue, I'm so glad you got so much out of my post - thank you for such very kind words! Your own froggie memories have been lovely to read - and yes yes yes to stomping in the gutters in wellies!
I had such fun with the artwork - although I had a bit of trouble getting the right shade of blue for my wellies! Got there in the end, though! 🤣
Your stories, Rebecca, read like a favorite song. Your cherished memories become my cherished memories for a time -- they make me remember things I've never even experienced! I re-stacked this lovely piece with these comments this morning.
Oh Sharron, you're so very kind - I love that you're adopting my memories - that's what it's all about! Thank you for such beautiful words - I really appreciate them, and I really appreciate you! 😊
Wonderful story.
About the wellies (called gumboots here) but especially the taddies.
My early life l;ike yours was filled with the charm of tadpoles and frogs and we spent much time with huge jars filled with spawn which was tipped back into wetlands as soon as the legs appeared. I also loved finding frogs in my grandmother's garden, tiny creamy-coloured things with a black dorsal stripe. But the lovely swampy public area where we used to find frogs and spawn has now been developed (I hate society some times) and I think of all those future frogs whose home was decimated.
Fortunatley, not far from that bogland, my friends huge garden has been very damp with La Nina over the last three years and for the last three years it's boomed and warbled with many frogs. A good sign. The same on our farm, which over six or seven years of drought had become very quiet but within months of the Big Wet, had become a frogland orchestra again. I love that nature can bounce back if given a chance.
You always spark memories for me, Rebecca. I'm grateful. XXXX
Prue, thank you so much, and I'm delighted to hear your own memories of taddies and frogs! Tasmanian frogs sound so pretty - cream with a black stripe - our frogs over here are mottled and in shades of brown, and some are yellowy, some are greeny. Not bright yellow or green, but yellow/brown, greeny/brown. Pretty in their own way!
'Frogland orchestra' - what a wonderful expression! 🙌
You might like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PMiP90ntZ8
Absolutely wonderful newsletter!! Thank you!!!!
Sue, I'm so thrilled you enjoyed it - thank you so much! I had such fun writing and illustrating it! 😘
Great story Rebecca!
I had to laugh at your welly being used for the frogspawn. I'm sure as a kid, you were very upset about that. Here you have some welly's that you cherish and now they're being used for a purpose they are not intended for.
I like your artwork. Great job!
I have a frog story but it's not from a pond. When I lived in my house, I had a section of the front lawn that had plants surrounded by railroad ties. There was red mulch put down over the whole area. One day, some of the mulch was moved. I thought I saw a small piece of garbage that had been blown over to the spot. I leaned down to grab it when I hesitated. It was not garbage. It had eyes. It was a large frog. I'm glad I didn't put my hand down there. I probably would have jumped and maybe screamed or yelled. 🤣
Oh wow, Matt - that's a great frog story! I would have jumped out of my skin! 🤣
And yes, as a kid I was very upset - but it's so funny to look back now on that occasion!
I'm so glad you enjoyed my post - thank you so much! 😊