warm and sunny days

Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous day - hope your's was! - I sat outside by the fish pond in the afternoon doing a bit of knitting and taking the odd photograph.  John did the first grass cut of the season, I've marked him with an arrow in this photo as he's about to empty the cuttings on the compost heap by the ditch:

Ducks and drakes had a great time sifting through the mown grass and taking a trip into the field:

 Can I name them at this distance, you ask?  Yes, I can, from left to right: Gertie, Bless, Georgie, Praline/Beyoncé, Billie-Jean and Ben and the black Jay-Z in front of them, Big 'H', Tuts, Joseph.

As I was sitting there knitting, drinking a cup of tea and eating a piece of cake [Petra platsch's recipe], I suddenly saw a movement out of the corner of my eye, and there sat a frog - it looked as if it had a bit of vegetation wrapped around him.  As I picked up the camera it moved across the pebbles, clambered up on to the brick edging,

and from there on the edge of the fish pond.  I was too slow to catch his leap into the water, but I could see his big googly eyes right in the middle of it later.

Our group of 10 are still not going into the frog pond below the fish pond, so there are more and more patches of frog spawn in it.  On Wednesday it looked like this:

 Last night there was a lot more:

 Oh, and John's jokey Christmas prezzie from Annie has found a home: