The Frog Woo

This whole town has me charmed. It usually does that. It’s the art, architecture, fountains and flowers that get me. Wandering through the streets of Charleston is like walking around in a dream. Beauty is everywhere.


The migrating butterflies caused a pause this week.

The sunset at the Citrus Club on top of the Dewberry took my breath away.

Cooper River Bridge

But I did not fall head-over-heals in love until I spied two frogs in a tiny boat.

The cutest scene in the city.

I squealed at them through a hole in the hedge. “This is it!” I said. “There is magic right here!”

Pond of dreams

Thankfully, I did not have to stick my camera through the hedge. We turned the corner to see a ROUND frog pond with a frog party in progress.

Magical

I felt my feet growing roots. I was mesmerized like a blinded frog myself… Staring at something from my imagination created by a soulmate stranger.

There was something so familiar about the scene that I stayed silently planted on the sidewalk, hoping noone would break the spell of the frogs of my dreams surrounding the most adorable tiny floating boat.

It was like a scene from the beloved Frog and Toad books. Did the owners do this intentionally? Did they know their little frogs were wooing women as they passed and paused by their magic pond?

THIS is pure gold made of bricks, moss, water and metals. I do and will always love FROGS and Charleston. Now I know where to find them both together…Just like Frog and Toad!

Adorable amphibians

FLOW

Walk Softly

I must move carefully in the garden. There are friends underfoot everywhere.

Do you see it?

One of my most vivid memories as a young child is the murdering of a toad found in the sandbox at Mrs. Blythe’s nursery school. An older boy found the toad, tortured it and smashed it with a rock. He should have been sent straight to Jackson’s Training School or jail.

My sister and I took toad deaths very seriously. We had a graveyard in the woods where we buried the smashed flat, dried toads we found in the road. We would hold solemn funerals for the deceased. We also gave guided tours of our facilities to the neighbors, who I am sure were thoroughly amused.

So with this bit of childhood baggage, I fear the accidental death of one of my amphibious friends.

They are in every hole and hopping across every walkway.

When I burned weeds with my torch last night, I was on the lookout so as not to bar-b-que a little neighbor.

It’s hard to walk and work without worry when you have little friends underfoot.

FLOW

The Disharmonious Symphony

Each night there is a performance by our toads and our frogs.

It’s an amphibious contest of decibels.

The loudest group gains control of the pond.

The toads belt out flats.

While the frogs scream in sharps.

We wish they would quit all their noise and get on with their spawning.

It seems they have forgotten the reason for their calling.

Frog, Loud and full of feces

They are too busy making noise to get busy in the pond.

Why can’t they quiet the raucous and form a caucus,

then quietly copulate each other?

FLOW

 

P.S. Amphibians use external fertilization so they do not copulate. I needed them to in this post for my own political purposes.