I've got an odd-looking little dweller in my garden. He is quite homely
and lumpy and craggy and wart-covered... and I've decided to give him the
position of being my official garden gnome.
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He's just a common toad... although I am not quite sure which particular
species. I was looking them up online and found some that looked quite
a bit like him, but never found one that was an exact match. I guess I'd
have to call in a consulting toadologist. (Well... what would you call
someone who specializes in studying toads?) His ability to hide in plain
sight was really quite good. When I first saw him -- with his back towards
me -- I thought he was just a dried up leftover leaf lying on the ground
next to my oregano plant. It was only when he didn't move in the breeze
the way other leaves did that I realized he was a toad.
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He's quite a bit more impressive in a close-up view (held the camera closer,
used full zoom, and cropped the photo a little bit). He's larger than life
size in this picture -- in actuality I don't think he's more than two inches
end-to-end.
Well, as long as we are out here in the garden, let me show you what that
looks like now...
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That's Romaine lettuce in the closest corner. Further along those rows I have some red leaf lettuce. (Yes, I stuck a few extra red leaf lettuce plants in around the tomatoes and eggplant.) Well, I guess that just identified a few more plants. The green stuff beyond the tomatoes is a row of red radishes along the walkway, a row of carrots next to them (too small to see), some mesclun mix lettuce, and the strings are there for some climbing peas.
The area where I had the trees cut down a few weeks ago is in the back
of our backyard and that will take a lot of work to turn it a garden. Depending
on my progress, I might stick some lettuce there to see what happens, but
basically that is going to be a vegetable garden next year, with some dwarf
fruit trees and some berry bushes as well.
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