frog princess

I was in the sort of mood yesterday where everything seems useless and crap, and the weather was vile. I used several coloured pens to plan out the remaining parts of my Monsters story and I cooked, which always makes me feel better.

I made bread - a bloomer style loaf that expanded in a huge and satisfying way in the oven into a sort of bread zeppelin. I also made the tradtional English dish of toad in the hole. Not with real toads, obvsly. It was delicious - the Yorkshire pudding was soft and melt in the mouth, with rich red wine and onion gravy that I simmered for an hour. To go with it I made broccoli and peas with red onion and fennel and some white balsamic vinegar. Mmm, must remember that one.

One of the little people came round earlier bearing a home made carrot cake (made with twenty billion carrots, she informed me. We found out later that it was really only four). It was delicious and moist! This coming week I'm experimenting with bread and butter pudding, as I'm going to make one for my friend J's birthday on Friday.

Today we bought sand so I can expand the brick paving in the garden, and more plants: two pink delphiniums, two furry silvery-leaved things I can never remember the name of but they have extremley bright pink flowers, garden mint, four celeriac plants, two foxgloves the colour of raspberry yoghurt and some crazy frou-frou purple and white petunias for the tubs. I'm growing peas this year for the first time, with trepidation and many warnings of doom from my dad. They coming up all right, but I don't know how to keep the fucking snails from eating them. I'm also growing tomatoes, six different kinds of greens, dill and coriander and basil. Oh, and I bought a butternut squash seedling with no idea where to grow it.

Frog news - the pond is now basically a tadpole nursery. There are hundreds and hundreds. I am scared.

Yesterday was good. I dyed my hair (it's sort of light auburn now, from dark blonde). Two new bras were bought in the M&S sale, for £5 and £7 each. I met with friend G in the evening and we had a good two hours talking about how to develop his novel. I drank two bottles of cider, mmm.

This morning I checked the enormous amount of frog spawn in the pond, spied on the frogs, wrote about 700 words of various things and perused the HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of prompts on lgbtfest, some of which are just so tempting.

Now, right this minute, I'm going to get back on my exercise bike and begin cycling to Rivendell again, or possibly that should be from Chang'An to Houtou Castle?

The mini frogs seem to spend most of their time throwing themselves down the steps to our back door and getting stuck there, and there are apparently hundreds of them. I didn't know frogs would be this much hard work.

More ( froglets )

At last they have legs. Tiny legs!

( Cut for legs )

The tadpoles in the pond are getting huge, and there are still lots of them, probably about 100. Here's one chomping algae: ( Tadpole mouth! )

Woke up at 7 am.  Stomach is somewhat better, although dread Woman's Time began today. Perhaps the two are linked.  In Boots I noticed that Kotex sanitary towels have white packaging printed with a single bright red item, like a shoe or a cake or something else that appeals to us women. The days of sanitary products avoiding the colour red are over, it seems. This has got to be a good thing.

The frog laid lots of spawn last week and is now resting in the weeds in our pond with just its head poking out of the water. The pond skaters are mating in that very awkward looking way they have, sort of on their backs and upside down.  Pregnant women in town showing off their bellies- it feels like the whole world is reproducing, or perhaps I'm just noticing it more right now.