mardi 19 juillet 2011

Verdigris

Un peu verte sur gris-noir


You see, F.M.? Here is one that stayed green on the raft that the pot of Japanese Horsetail has become for the frogs.

I scared it, and the littler one, away feeding the fish a short time ago. But, I watched it, and it stayed the same color.
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mercredi 13 juillet 2011

Gray on gray

Gray frog with beige stripe


You see? It is no coincidence. Right down to her (let us say) skin matching the color of the dirt and the bottoms of the Japanese Horsetail stalks (Fia ate the green tops off during her recent anxiety-causing grossesse nerveuse) and the stripe up her back to her nose and her tummy matching the bit off straw-colored grass mixed in where she is sitting on this gray summer day.

She could sit anywhere. She chose this particular place, where she feels safe.

The intelligence of nature.
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jeudi 7 juillet 2011

Wild thing

There are those who just somehow seem to know how to make themselves disappear into the scenery. By instinct, or by design, they know who they are, and where they are best unseen.

These are the unhistrionic frogs. They might even be considered the shy frogs. Perhaps, the wise frogs.

There are the green ones. They know green. Green is their color. They wear it in leaves, whether of the suspended or of the floating kind, in feathery aquatic plants, in watery grasses and moss, or simply in one another.


Green


And then there are, perhaps my personal favorite for their marked lack of beauty and uncanny ability to find the plants that only Fia could make for them, the ones with no stalks, no leaves, nothing left of any color whatsoever, like themselves, the gray ones, who resemble spotted stones and chose backgrounds perfectly suited to their lack of color.

They are the unusual ones. They usually lie on the edges of the old stone farm sink my husband found in the bottom garden shortly after he moved into the house and hauled up to put in the fountain, complete with angels, which he removed and sunk to the depths of his new fish-pond-in-a-converted fountain (for photos, see the bottom slideshow in this post, "A la bourre"), until Fia got to the Japanese Horsetail in a fit of anxiety in her recent "grossesse nerveuse". Once she had finished with it, all that remained were the lower stalks, black, the dirt and the roots.

Perfect for the gray frogs.

Gray


And then, there are the ones who don't care. Who will flaunt it. Who can pose and work the camera. Who can wear the really bright colors and carry them off, while you know you look best in tailored or draped styles in black, brown, beiges and grays, and navy blue: a gray frog, recently blond.

Who will walk on the wild side.

Wild thing, you make my heart sing.


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