I am always fascinated by the etymology of words and phrases.  It is supposed that the word “tad” (meaning a liittle) originated from “tadpole.”  I have written about our toads several times and a reader requested wanting to actually see one in the tadpole stage.  I may have a better picture, but for the time being this is the best one I have managed to fish up.  (No pun intended.)  From what I have been able to observe the female lays a few hundred eggs that look like a bunch of black dots in our pond.  Not very long after I can see they’ve become tadpoles, which swim about freely feeding on microscopic organisms.  At about six weeks they grow hind legs and around three months their tails shrink and they are able to breathe out of water and go on land.  This is based on my amateur observation anyway.  Part of the joy is in learning.  The famed French explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau once said:

“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.”

There are struggles and triumphs; sorrows and pains.  The comfort is in knowing if you are in a diffucult time the good will come back around.  Water, like life, is rhythmic.  And they all follow the cycles of life.