Sep 28 2008
In a Frog’s Eye
One of the real pleasures I get from photography is the details I see only when I get in from the field, download the images and start looking at them closely.
Today, I saw that I’d taken an accidental self-portrait in the eye of this Bull Frog–you can see me hunched over the camera and Liz standing next to me. Click on this or any photo for a larger view.
Below is a head-on view of another Bull Frog. Frogs must see everything in widescreen, as their large eyes and their sideways arrangement allow them to see forward, backward, and to both sides, seemingly simultaneously. It’s an amazing body plan, perfect for an animal that slips frequently between the roles of predator and prey.
These Bull Frogs were living in a water garden in a local produce stand and garden center that goes by the psychedelic name of Tomato Sunshine. I think there was a brief period in the early 70′s when that moniker would have been considered a reasonable (and laudably unisex) name for a child. Now, the popular boy’s names seem mostly straight from the bible, while the girls read like the credits on a silent film, or perhaps a 19th century poetry anthology. Here’s the most recent list.
The water garden at Tomato Sunshine is filled with water lettuce and water hyacinths, both of which would almost certainly freeze were they to “escape.” I hope. Check out the cool snake gourds on the rock to the left.
Harvest season at Tomato Sunshine. Stop on by, if you’re in town. It’s a lot more interesting shopping experience than the produce section of the supermarket, or the garden center at a big box chain.
Love your frog photos. Looks like a fun place to visit.
Not as interesting as frogs, perhaps, but there is a really neat site to see how first name popularity changes over time.
http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=&ms=false&sw=f&exact=false
It shows that in the 1920′s Jeffrey ranked 622 in popularity for boys. It suddenly jumped and in the 1940′s it was in 88th place, then in the 1950′s 24th place, and in the 1960′s 10th place! Then it began to fall off, like most popular names, so that in 2007 it was ranked 190.
Not as precipitous a fall as Mary, which was #1 for girls through the 1050′s, but is only ranked 93 in 2007.
I told you I’d follow you anywhere.
I love you.