Spring, Swiss style

A sure fire sign of Spring, in our household, is the emmergance of frogs. We are a family who loves creatures and the variety that hide in mucky, slimy ponds rank pretty high on our list of favourites.

Recently we have come to believe that frogs might be a pretty big deal here. They inspire their own series of road signs, seen everywhere at this time of year. Similar to our deer crossing and moose crossing signs back home, here we have frog crossing signs.

Beware of frogs crossing. How great is that? The short green fencing in the background is an effort to keep them off the road. Evidently in the evenings volunteers go out to help any little rebels who do venture onto the road. Must figure out how to sign up for that!

We have a good sized pond near our house. (The locals call it a lake. It’s no lake.) We recently discovered that it is teeming with frogs. So much so that when D plunged in to grab one he came up with two!

Including this guy who seemed to have a lot to tell us.

A walk in the woods on a particularly sunny day this week revealed an abundance of lizards too.

The biggest of our lizard captives that afternoon.

This Spring is promising to provide ample reasons to go exploring in the woods. Easiest ticket to entertainment around.

Creatures equals happiness to my crew. My happiness on the otherhand is far more linked to sunny patios with friends, ideally while my children are off finding creatures somewhere else. Luckily there is an abundance of sunny patios at this time of year too. (Grandma, get ready to try many of them on your upcoming visit! And you’ll likely be expected to hold a frog or two too.)

My post office is nicer than your post office. Even our post office has one of the nicest patios in town.

With Spring solidly rooted here my productivity of indoor related tasks has fallen down quite noticably. House keeping, cooking, practicing German online, have all been put on hold in my attempt to soak up as much of this Spring as possible. I hear my mother and my grandmothers in me as I insist the children stop to marvel at a new flower or bird we’ve discovered along our way.

“Look you two! Isn’t that flower/bird just amazing?”

And their response is as enthusiastic as mine was at the same age. “Ya Mom, wow. Can we get going?”

Luckily the promise of hunting creatures always gets them outside. Every. Single. Time.

And one day, when they are seasoned and weathered they will inexplicably find themselves stopping to marvel at the flowers and birds. ”Tis the circle of life my friends.