Treefrog Treehouse

July 31, 2026

It’s real, the treefrog we saw in the birdhouse. King of the castle. Or maybe it’s the frog prince? We didn’t smooch it to find out, though we bow our heads slightly and avert our gaze. We were only trying not to spook it, but end up looking like loyal subjects, offering our deference. Which is, I suppose, true enough.

This unlikely sight is not rendered, nor composited, not interpolated or extrapolated. It’s as real and slick and green and alive as the pretty goldfinch bird in the puddle today was a luscious buttercup yellow.

The goldfinch was not in this frog’s kingdom, but down at the municipal water depot. Where — after satiating the trucks’ always-thirsty holding tanks — a surprise watershed forms from the emptying hoses. They drain onto the concrete slab, and the gentle slope of the parking pad directs their rivulets of water to form a bird-sized swimming pool in a patch of missing asphalt.

The shiny metal trucks fill their tanks and drive away, meanwhile a little yellow bird dips and shakes and dips and shakes and splashes in what’s left behind. Joyful in this sudden and strange abundance of water. Just once, I hope I look this utterly and completely happy while taking a bath.

Now on to the potted plants at the nursery’s clearance sale who have knit themselves together. They are unwilling, so late in the season, to let anyone be alone. They’ve decided they are one organism now, limbs locked together in protest. All for one. Each is linked tightly to its neighbours. So effective this solidarity, this counter-spell to aloneness. I pet them absentmindedly while chatting with the lady who works there about hummingbird moths and cucumber recipes. We don’t divide them, and instead she hands me the whole tray. Their act of defiance has succeeded.

Home again, where a soft young rabbit eats an orb of clover and watches me with its onyx gaze, and fireflies while away the too-bright day on the underside of milkweed leaves. It’s real. All of it. Tooth and claw, seed and feather.

A bit of time away from the screen and the scroll, and I find so many other, happier, better reasons not to believe my eyes. 💚

Have a lovely long weekend folks! 🐸👑