Amphibian friend, bringer of hope.

I am currently in the middle of a three day project of using a sprinkler for a couple hours at night to soak the backdoor garden beds, building a 'bank' of subsurface moisture for them to draw on in the approaching heat wave.  Sadly, I'm using tap water for this, but needs must at present.  I think this approach will lead to less watering in the coming weeks and better plant health.

Be that as it may (more on the subject of water and watering to come), I went outside just now to check progress (for my two hour session I'll check it at least twice as it can be a bummer if an old hose connection gives away or there's a significant change in water pressure and you only find out at the end).  While down on my haunches watching the pattern of spray distribution I noticed something near my feet.  Upon examination it turns out to be a frog!

I don't see frogs around here, there's nowhere for them to live and just about everything that eats meat has them at the top of the menu.  I occasionally here some at a reed bed in a watercourse soakage point about 500m away, but that's it.  And we don't have toads either (that I've seen or heard of, anyways).

So it was a real pleasant surprise to have a frog hop past me on the back veranda.  I gave him a little pat while he made like a leaf and wished him well.  Hopefully he'll find a home amongst the shaded, cooler pot plants nearby and eat lots of mosquitoes.

I'm real excited, a frog means I must be doing something right in our yard in respect of water and evaporation strategy.  We are expecting four days of 40C and above coming our way this week, with high thirties for a couple days beforehand, starting tomorrow.  With wind.  Will be torrid.

I hope the frog gets through it.

Note:  I had a look on the living atlas and found it to be a 'common eastern froglet'.  Apparently it's common through its wide distribution, residing in bodies of standing water or flowing creeks.  Only open standing water around here is the turtle pond, and I'm sure Molly (our Long neck turtle, rescued after road injury by someone else a year ago) would enjoy sharing her abode with a frog - for about as long as it took her to hunt and devour said frog.  Very glad that I saw it!