What are little boys made of?
Snakes Frogs and snails, and puppy dogs tails tadpoles
That’s what little boys are made of!

The boys in question are some of the boys pictured above and in today’s header.  Yesterday, they were busy frogging in one of the pools in front of the Climatron at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.  The picture to the left shows a handful of the little amphibians, that they were catching.  The colorful glass balls floating in the pool are Chihuly art works.  In the world there is great art and then there is the art of being a boy.  While the boys were practicing catch and release, it was not clear that all of the frogs were released in the same pristine condition that they were caught in, sort of a handling charge.  Today’s header and the handful of frogs are Anne’s pictorial contributions to today’s post.

There was a major construction project underway around these pools and it was being actively worked on Memorial Day, in the rain.  Men were building a temporary platform for some charity event.  It completely covered one of the three pools in front of the Climatron and probably disturbed the frogs.  At first I thought that it was part of this year’s sesquicentennial anniversary of the founding of the garden, if it is it did not look open to the public.

Anne and I had originally planned on doing the Bicycle Fun Club’s Great Pizza Ride, but the rain came in over night and while it wasn’t always raining, it did rain frequently enough to dissuade us from biking.  So off to the Botanical Gardens we went.

Almost immediately after meeting with the boys and their frogs, the skies opened up and we retreated to the Climatron.  Where better to wait out a rain storm, but in a rain forest?  We were not alone.  The snaking pathway soon filled with little kids, competing photographers and just plain too many people.  There were pretty and exotic flowers and plants and Anne and I with our dueling cameras must have photographed them all.  Today’s expedition will produce blog fodder for many days to come.

There will be no flowers with today’s post though.  Today’s post is all about frogs.  The little blue guy above and the black and white guy below were in a terrarium at the base of the Climatron.  Normally in the wild, these guys are poisonous; in Saint Louis these guys are not fed the poisonous insect that they need to create their poison that protects them in the wild.

After the rain Anne and I walked around for a bit.  The rain had brought the rising humidity all the closer.  We walked around the gardens of the Kemper Home Gardening Center.  It one bed that must be what rabbits dream of as heaven, where the lettuce and the cabbage are so huge, I overheard another couple lament at the size of this bed versus their own.  I quipped, “Don’t try this at home folks, these guys are professionals.”

It started to rain again, so dodging subsequent rain storms, we first made it back to the car, then to a late lunch at the City Diner on Grand and then home again.  Today was a nice day, it just was not a bike day.  Today’s weather was good frog weather though.  😉