Froggy Went a Courting

... and this is the result. A teeming mass of tadpoles carpeting the base of a large garden pond. Many of them look likely to form a meal for one of the many newts that we also saw in the water. But that's the way the natural world is organised: massive over-abundance as a counter-weight to a low chance of survival. Both we and our son, in different parts of the country have been struck by how many sycamore seedlings have germinated this spring - was there something about the winter that has provoked them? Vanishingly few will me trees

The froggy in question in the song may have been a reference to the Duke of Anjou's attempts to marry Elizabeth I, who N was very unpopular. However the original (Scottish) version of the song pre-dates her reign, so perhaps its satirical edge was just a happy accident for those who found it useful