Spring is *almost* here. Dummy me: I neglected to check and re-check the weather predictions for the week before I ran to the pet store last night and bought 4 bullfrog tadpoles for my pond. I knew that night time temps were too cold so I scooped up a bunch of pond water into a giant bowl and allowed them to spend the night in an indoor environs. My plan was to take the bowl out this morning to acclimate to outdoor temps which I *thought* were going to be in the 50's. It was merely 37 (air temp) this morning at 10 am and the water was insanely cold. In fact, the goldfish went back into his nest in "torpor" which is like suspended animation, which they do when the water is too cold for normal activity.

Luckily, the sun has been beating down all day and so my relatively shalow pond, sans floating plants in quantity, is warming up nicely. I just took the bowl outdoors and sunk it into some gravel on a shallow pond bank. In about 30 minutes I'll measure water temps in the bowl and the larger water area and if its close enough, I'll release the tads and hope they make it overnight and start making a dent on the algae situation in the swamp!