it is may, and the gray tree frogs trill all evening and into the night, like troubadours singing for their lady loves. we sit on the deck and listen as darkness falls, and remember what it was like to sing all night for no good reason but love.

we found this courtly gentleman hiding between two weathered gray cedar planks of our dock this afternoon. he leaped down into the marsh grass and disappeared, and is probably one of the singers we can hear right now out our open patio door. he is most likely fern green, blending beautifully into his new marshy surroundings, and he is trying to sound, with all his might, like the gray tree frog equivalent of Cary Grant.

gray tree frog

turtle lake, saint paul, minnesota