As you are heading into spring we are winding down after our long summer break and March 1st signals the first day of  autumn. Classes at school and the local university are back in full swing. The local branch of the University of the Third Age is very active and I’ve enrolled in a couple of language classes. But over the holidays I had to learn a whole new language, toddler-speak.

          Two year old Lachlan is busy stringing a few words together. “PaBob gone werk” was easy to understand, so was “Roos eat grass” as he watched our semi-resident mob of  females and joeys grazing in the house paddock. We had a bit more of a problem with “Cows seep” until we realised the herd in the next paddock were all lying down and contentedly chewing their cud, obviously asleep! We soon picked up that “Docky” was his name for himself.

          “Docky feed birds” was a favourite past-time and Lachlan was thrilled when one of the King Parrots finally ate from the bowl he was holding. He’d had to resist the urge to speak or to move suddenly and he was rewarded by the resplendent bird gently picking at the sunflower seed. 

          One of my favourite times with my small grandson was when he fed the tadpoles in a small aquarium. We could look at the differences between the ones with legs and the ones without. A few very misguided frogs had laid their eggs in a large puddle along our driveway, obviously so excited that we finally had a decent puddle at all. Over a few weeks I watched the tadpoles developing and the water  drying up, then more life-giving rain would arrive again and replenish the water supply. I decided to assist the frog population with a life-saving effort… I caught as many as I could and popped them into the dam. At least they had a fighting chance against the resident turtles but no chance against the black snakes I’d seen feasting. On the day the puddle totally dried up I scraped up two lots of wriggling mud and put more future-frogs into the dam. The tadpoles in the aquarium had long back legs and I was anxious that their front legs remained  dormant until Lachlan had gone back home when they too could join their siblings in the dam.

          Watching the tadpoles took my memories right back to my own childhood when I used to   collect frogspawn from the small concrete pond in the old Lady Lumley’s Grammar School grounds. The pond was probably a left-over water supply from the Second World War when the pupils grew vegetables and herb along the school driveway as part of their war effort. As a child I was often found up there watching the tadpoles, frogs and newts and marvelling at the dragonflies and butterflies who came to drink. Headmaster David Baxendall lived opposite and he’d often come over for a chat and to ask and answer questions. He fostered my love of wildlife and interest in biology, he was a great mentor for a future biology teacher. And in turn I have relished the chance to teach a few things to a small member of the newest generation ... it’s one of the joys of being a grandparent.                                                                  

Caroline Gaden.