no excuses - just hanging out - working in the potager and my renamed english garden :) thanks for asking mr toad

What a coincidence, I almost started a toad thread too.. :) Last week I walked out on my front sidewalk at night and what looked like a leaf suddenly hopped into the garden bed when I walked by! It was a big fat toad! I was so excited because he is the first toad I've seen in the yard after living here almost 5 years. I even put a large plant saucer down on the ground last year and fill it with water so the toads would access to water. (The birds drink from it sometimes too.) I think he might be living under the bulb and daylily foliage. Of course I had to run and grab the camera -

That guy is actually a girl. The key characteristics for American toad are, enlarged warts on the tibia, the ridges above the eyes (supraorbital ridges) do not touch the big cheek gland, and no more than two warts in any large spot on the back. The legs on this girl tell the story. She has shiny breeding skin, so colors are lost in the shine. Boys are half pints, have black thumbs, and dark colored throat. Oh, and a beautiful singing voice. Boys will "chirp" when handled.

Oh gee, bogturtle .... such a loss to change the name to Pickerel in my online gallery. :-) Oh well ... I especially want to have the correct names on things. I will now search my blog to see what I can update there. Probably did a post on it. Danetherton, I try not to pick up frogs and toads because of the thinness of their skin and organisms that might be on my hands. It's very hard not to but I succeed except for the occasional baby tree frog which I will put my hand up to allowing it to walk on it. My natural tendency would be to hug everything I see. I give the bees a back rub while they feed on our flowers and so far they all love it. I know they can sense fear and react to it, so that's the key. I'm in the Piedmont actually. Mountains are 45 minutes away. Bogturtle ... biology wasn't my subject when I was in high school. We had a teacher that walked around with a huge snake on his neck. Growing up in the city I was terrified of snakes and also bugs which I got from my mom screaming every time a moth flew around or a bug crawled by. Fortunately I got gradually delivered of both fears when we moved to the woods 23 years ago. Now I love all of God's Creation and it so fascinates me. I was a good student but 3rd grading period we had to do a bug collection and I was petrified and told the teacher and he told me if I didn't do it I'd fail that period. So, I failed it because there was no way ... parents understood but it left a bad taste in my mouth for biology for a long time. LOL Thank you both for the confirmation.