Another Unforgettable Experience   by A.

When we first moved to the house with the pond we needed to do a lot of work in the garden because the previous owners had allowed it to go to rack and ruin (get into a rundown condition). One of the jobs we had to do was to clear an area of old shrubs and trees which had become overgrown at the bottom of the garden.

We spent several days digging up self seeded bushes and saplings (young trees) which had planted themselves in all the wrong places. Then we cut back and pruned (a special way of cutting trees) everything else.

When we had finished the area looked much tidier but there was a lot of bare soil where we had uprooted the rogue plants (the ones in the wrong places). We decided that the best idea would be to put down grass seed and turn the bare soil into a new lawn.

After a few weeks the grass seed sprouted and began to grow. We watched carefully for the time when it would be long enough to cut. Eventually, the grass had thickened and grown and the moment of truth had arrived (we were ready to cut the grass). During this time the frogs had mated, the frogspawn (frog's eggs) had hatched into tadpoles and they had turned into tiny, tiny froglets. They were as small as my little finger nail.

We got the lawn mower out of the shed and started to mow the grass. Suddenly, my husband shouted "Quick Meiann, come here! " so, I ran to see what the problem was. There in the new grass were hundreds of tiny froglets (well, there looked to be hundreds!) all of them right in the path of the lawnmower blades. What were we going to do, we asked ourselves. The grass had to be cut or it would die but if we cut it, the froglets would die. We were on the horns of a dilemma (we didn't know how to decide what to do).

Finally we hit upon a plan. I would go in front of the mower and "shepherd" the froglets ahead of me like small green sheep! Then when we were sure that there were none left in that patch of grass my husband could mow the lawn behind me.

We must have made a strange sight that day, me on my hands and knees ushering the froglets along (moving them in front of me) and out of harms way, with a lawn mower following closely behind me as if I was the grass! but we didn't mind, at the end of the (very long and tiring) day, we had a newly mown lawn and all the froglets were safe.

written by A., England