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Partner and a neighbor cut down one of the trees in our yard today. It wasn't extremely tall, but it was quite ugly and extremely prolific and cast a lot of shade onto the garden. Known as an elder, it's basically a weed that was allowed to grow into a tree. Now it's scattered all over our back lawn. It seems a lot bigger on the ground than it was in the air.

I took photos of our garden today and uploaded them. They can be reached by clicking on the link on the top left of this page below my picture. The first twenty-five or so are new ones.

We've got frog eggs at last and today we heard a frog peeping in the pond. Some of them burp, but this one peeped. It's the first one verified this spring. Of course we've seen lots of them--as Partner says, they look like one trying to jump over another but got stuck halfway. Partner has very delicate sensibilities. When once at the zoo I saw a mandrill grab another and start bouncing back and forth; most of the people turned to the next exhibit quickly (I think my gramma covered my little cousin's eyes) but my mouth dropped open and I couldn't tear my eyes away. There was, however, something almost indecent about it: mandrills have little hands and little hips just like humans. I think my first memory of the zoo as a tiny child was seeing the big bull elephant peeing. Like someone had strapped a long grey hose to his underside, it just kept coming and coming. And he made a veritable pond at his feet. A person can learn a lot at the zoo.