What do you feel at this sight? When I read all the blogs I follow, there seems to be one tiny thread that connects us all. We simply feel that there is not enough time. When I go out on my porch or look at this photo of it, I remember that we all have the same amount of time and few of us, and I especially, do not take advantage of these wonderful days of Spring and very soon Summer, to smell the roses, sit and read or just contemplate....which I call staring at the walls..., smell the smells and just enjoy.

I am awed at the sight of my garden in the early morning. All that hard work and knowing that it must continue is well worth it. I believe I am the richest person on earth right now. Is there anything more lovely than one's own garden, with all it's design faults, poor plant placement, weed, bugs and all. It makes my day beautiful.

Those darn preying mantises

My grandson Patrick is a budding, oh what is that word...oh yes--bug person. So at Christmas I send him a bug kit for a gift....you are supposed to keep egg cases of preying mantises in this until they hatch and then raise them to become adult bugs.

I ordered 3 egg cases to go with it and he was so very excited about them. It took many months for them to be sent with many calls back and forth and to the egg producers and Patrick, as with most 10 year old boys, has little or no patience. He kept bugging me (oh yes) and finally his egg case came. He and his Mother put it in its darling little house and impatiently waited. The hatchlings finally came out (many many many of them) and since they wanted to keep only a few, not hundreds, set the house outside in the yard with a stick so the little buggers could climb out. These wonderful people live in Texas and that night, with little warning, came a huge rain which flooded their yard and the first floor of their house. The darling little house full of preying mantises floated off down the street and of course that was the end of the bugs. We were all sad, especially Patrick.

Now in case you are wondering why I would post this silly little story on what I consider to be a "sort of a garden" site, I had also ordered 3 egg cases for myself knowing that my garden would benefit from those hungry little buggers eating up all the bad bugs as they grow to adulthood.
In the course of pruning my shrubs this spring I had found about 5 things that looked like what could be egg cases...and yes, they do match the ones I received in the mail yesterday. So I should have roughly 800 to 1500 preying mantises in my garden (35 x 70) this summer. How's that for trying to be "green"....and organic!

No bad bugs for me.