Gardening with chickens and toads

Last evening I was out planting in containers and in the ground, trying to get the place spruced up, I'm going to be on a garden tour in July, YIKES!! What was I thinking????

Anytime I have a shovel, I collect an audience, they know that the shovel magically turns up worms, tasty worms, YUM!!

Two hens appear....

....then red spies them and wants to join in the worm fest.

Three become four, it's getting pretty crowded there when you put me in the mix...

.....I finally gave up and went someplace else till they were done with their excavation work.

In front of the scratch pen is an old chicken feeder on legs that I was going to plant to cockscomb...

Get it? Got it? Good!!

I was raking out the top soil from last year to replace it with new and I wasn't being very gentle. I was pulling what I thought was a tuft of dog hair wedged in the side.

SURPRISE!!

It wasn't dog hair!!

It was a tree frog who had buried himself in the planter to ride out the winter and was very pale!

This is what he will look like this summer on a green plant...

....but if you find one on a fence or tree they are brownish, kind of like a chameleon?

I gently reburied him in the planter and put all the cockscomb in around him to continue his nap. It reminded me of the time when I lived at Whiting and Rosanne came visiting. She was walking around the yard and then came to get me, took me out by the propane barrel, pointed down and said, "Look." It took a minute but then I saw a toad face in the dirt, I said, "Who did you ever see it?" She said, "He blinked!"

I was busy in the MacGregor yard, cleaning out a plant that wants to take over, FYI, when someone wants to give you a plant and says, "It does real good," RUN, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!! I was digging and pulling when a vehicle drove in and a guy gets out and says, "Hi, Julie." My mind went blank, did I know him? Then I saw the Liberty township map out of the platt book clutched in his hand and thought, "AH HA!" An Insurance Salesman! I was right.

But I have to give him credit for not missing a beat as he stood and talked with two big dog noses stuck in his crotch!

Oh the indignities of a traveling salesman.