Creatures of the Garden

Being a gardener means getting used to seeing all types of creatures in the garden. That is fine with me, but Florida tends to grow some big things. Spiders can be huge. Snakes can be poisonous. Frogs can be unwelcome when they are an invasive species.

Frogs

I know that frogs are necessary and very good at keeping the bug population low, but I get creeped out by frogs.

Unwrapping my cucumber plants one morning, this little frog was exposed. He was just sitting happily on a leaf. I hope he was eating the pickleworms. Is he a good frog? I don’t know.

That same morning I also saw this little frog (below). I can’t identify him, but here is an extensive list of frogs found in Central Florida.

A Creepy Frog Story (See Photo Below)

One morning I was fertilizing some of my garden plants. Using the watering can, I filled it with fish fertilizer and water – for the second time – and then, this huge frog popped up from inside! He’d been hiding inside the watering can and somehow lasted through the first watering.

Frogs can be native to the area and good for the environment, or they can be invasive species that disrupts things by killing off the good stuff. I really have a hard time identifying frogs, so I have no idea what types these are.

Bees in the Garden

Each morning, shortly after I uncovered the cucumber plants, this bumblebee would show up and visit every flower. It was as if he was someplace close by just waiting for me to show up.

Sometimes little honey bees can be found resting inside the petals of my zinnias. The photo isn’t good, but there were about eight bees in this bright pink flower!

Snakes

I am not afraid of snakes, in fact I like to see them in the yard. Long ago I learned how to identify the poisonous ones that live in Florida. We lived in a very wooded, rural place back then. We saw a lot of big snakes. Because I had kids that played outside, and if they were ever bitten, I wanted to know if they had been poisoned! Fortunately, that never happened.

These days, because of all the habitat loss, I seldom see snakes. This little snake is dead. This is how I got the close up photo of its head. My cat found it on the cardboard in the yard, but I don’t know what killed it. It’s a juvenile of some kind and is not poisonous. The poisonous snakes of Florida have triangular heads, except for the Coral snake (red touch yellow kill a fellow), which this is not. My guess would be a juvenile Ribbon snake.

These are just some of the garden creatures that show up around my yard. Lady bugs are usually present on the Eggplant leaves, and I always love to see them. The lizards are also always around (some of those are also an invasive species), but they are all contributing to eating the bugs.

I can only hope that nature is still in sync around here and keeping everything in check as it should be.

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