All these little black and white dots are frog eggs suspended in a gelatinous substance that feeds and protects them till they grow their little tails and start swimming on their own.

We got our usual lazy start yesterday. The weather app said the high would only be around 75° which is wonderful for working outside. The grass isn’t quite long enough to mow, so we knew our attention would be on the pool. We left it Monday evening with a chorus of green tree frogs and a little too dark for me to try to fish them out without them jumping on me. So, after our breakfast of grits and eggs, we headed out to get to work.

I put the net on the leaf catcher and sucked up as much gunk as I could off the bottom. Once all the big stuff was up, all that was left was algae and it just filters right through the mesh bag. I switched to the skimmer to get what was floating and about that time, Mrs. FixIt 1.0 and our daughter came by on their way to the nursery on out the road.

I had just discovered masses of gelatinous blobs containing hundreds of frog eggs. I dutifully scooped them up and carried them out to the ditch along the road so they could grow into more green tree frog and grace us with the song of their people. As I got a closer look, I noticed tadpoles swimming in the pool. This was getting serious. We have to do something before we’re overrun with these little boogers.

I asked our daughter if she would like to take some of the eggs and tadpoles home to show the littles. She thought that was a great idea, so I got an old plastic container and filled it with water from the pool. Then slowly, scoop by scoop, I added egg masses and tadpoles. At one point, one of the tadpoles didn’t get in the jar and landed on our outdoor dining table. 

I tried to scoop it up with the net but it was too awkward. And, there is a very long pole connected to the net. Before I knew what was happening, the long handle slipped out of my hand and hit the deck…at which point the contents of the net flipped up and hit me square in the face! Thankfully my first instinct was to shut my mouth. When I slowly opened my eyes to evaluate the situation, I realized there was a long stringy mass of frog eggs dangling form my nose!!!

Being as cool and calm as I could muster, I scraped the eggs off my nose and the table top and dropped them into the container for the kids. Hokey smokes…I’m ALWAYS getting into something, aren’t I? lol We all had a very good laugh over that one. Off and on all day, I scooped more and more of the tadpoles out. We turned on the pump and the skimmer took care of the egg masses. 

Next up was power washing the deck furniture. We live in such a humid environment that green algae grows all over everything if you don’t keep up with it. We didn’t use the deck that much last year, so nothing got cleaned up. Mr. FixIt sprayed down all of our furniture then I sprayed the glass topped table. I missed a few places so I’ll have to go over it with Windex and a scrubby today. 

I don’t want to put out the new cushions till we get the deck power washed and sealed. And we can’t do that till after the pool is clean. We still need to stir up the bottom and sides of the pool with a broom then, in a day or two, we’ll be able to shut down the pump, put the new sand in it, add chemicals, and get the pump turned back on. That will be the end of the frogs in the pool! (I hope!)

I fixed a wonderful pot of spaghetti and sauce for supper. It was cool enough to cook without heating up the whole house and we’ve missed having a real meal. After supper, we went out on the deck and sat listening for the tree frogs and watching the daylight fade away. I went in for a couple of bowls of cubed watermelon for our dessert. We were thrilled it was a good one. It was billed as seedless, but there were seeds. I like watermelon with seeds. I think they have more flavor.

Once the lightning bugs came out and the cool of the evening came rolling in, we called it quits. It was a good, productive, and fun day visiting with our peeps and fishing out the peepers…even if I DID get egg(s) on my face! (See what I did there? lol)

🤭

“Their land teemed with frogs, which went up into the bedrooms of their rulers.”

Psalms 105:30 NIV