The Polywog pond

We have two decks; a small one off our kitchen that overlooks the front yard, and a larger one off the dining room that overlooks our back yard.

On Friday morning, Jace's friend Emery and his two twin sisters came over to play.  They were fascinated by the blue swimming pool we had set up on our small, front deck.

This blue pool is our polywog pond.  We have been raising tadpoles now for 5 weeks.  It all started on a Sunday afternoon in May when we decided to take a Sunday drive.

We wanted to go someplace new, so we drove to the Coralville lake dam.  There we found Fossil Gorge, a famous gorge that is known for its fossils.

There in the gorge were hundreds, or maybe thousands of small, black tadpoles.  We had an empty water bottle in the car, so we filled it with water and moss and a few tadpoles.

Jace now has 4 frogs!

Since that fateful day, the last 5 weekends have been filled with us going back to the gorge for more water and tadpoles.  Why have a quart jar full of tadpoles on your kitchen counter, when you can  have a whole swimming pool full on your deck?

Here is Jace yesterday at the entrance to the gorge with his quart jar with 4 frogs in it. This is the first time we have had frogs to take back home.

He wanted to returned them to their families.  

He watched them hop away for a few minutes.

Then he and Ryan started filling up our 7 gallon water container with gross, stinky water, new moss and several more tadpoles.

Because Ryan was on call, and was waiting for a page from the OR to let him know

that his patient with the mandible fracture was ready for surgery,

we cut the trip short by telling Christopher Robin he had 5 minutes to fill up the container and if he could-catch more tadpoles.

When the 5 minutes were up, Jace had the container almost full of water and several more tadpoles.  Lucky us! Then Ryan carried it all back to the van

and loaded us up.

Sure enough his pager went off on the way home, so he carried the water upstairs to the deck for Jace then off to the hospital he went until 11:40PM last night.

So here's to several more weeks of raising tadpoles!