Grass Roots

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Luca and Nana went to Grass Roots today and adopted some Koi for Nana's pond. It was hard work so Luca took a bit of a time out and sat in the garden where he had seen several ponds. Some of them had huge adult Koi of many different colors. Luca really liked the reddish colored ones.

Luca also saw tadpoles in one of the ponds; some of them had small hind legs because they were beginning to turn into frogs. Frogs and tadpoles do not look anything like each other! Tadpoles live in the water and are scavengers feeding on plants and other sources of protein. Tadpoles breathe oxygen that is dissolved in water by using gills. They swim like fish and have a tail.

Adult frogs have four legs and can leave the water but must stay close to keep their skin moist. They do not have tails. You can often find them sitting on waterlily leaves during the day. They usually feed on insects and worms and can hop around the garden at night using their strong hind legs looking for their food. They stay close to the pond so they can jump back into the water in case predators try to catch and eat them. Frogs breathe using lungs and also their moist skin. Frogs hibernate or sleep through the winter at the bottom of ponds and get oxygen through their skins instead of using their lungs.

When spring arrives and the water warms up, the hibernating frogs wake up from their winter naps and lay their eggs in the water. A couple of weeks later the eggs hatch into very small tadpoles which grow all summer.

Luca also saw some hens and roosters and learned how to tell the roosters from the hens - the roosters crow. Roosters are the boys and hens are the girls. There was at least one Peacock with very long tail feathers also.

We walked in the greenhouse too but couldn't stay in there long because it was so hot and humid (wet) in there. It was like a tropical rain forest.