Wednesday Vignette: You can't keep a grasshopper down

Grasshopper or katydid?  She has short antennae and doesn't look like a walking leaf so I'm assuming she's a grasshopper.

This little character has been hanging around my cutting garden for weeks now.  When I first spotted her she was balanced atop a lush Dahlia 'Hollyhill Karen Lee', which she quietly nibbled until it looked as though it had received a crew cut.  When the dahlia's stem broke, I tossed the flower in the compost bin, only belatedly wondering if she'd managed an escape.  I found her yesterday perched on this sad-looking Dahlia 'Terracotta'.  She looked a lot like how I feel, surrounded by dirt and a general mess.

It's taking a long time to finish our roof.  The crew worked on it steadily all last week, even returning for a couple of hours on Saturday morning to button down the garage roof in advance of rain.  We got all of 5/100ths of an inch, enough to transform the dust that's covered everything into a dirty film.  The roofers were back on the job Monday morning.  Whether they'll finish today is anybody's guess.

This is how things looked at mid-day on Tuesday.  I've learned the hard way that roofing isn't just hard on the exterior landscape - it also generates a lot of dirt inside the house.

Interestingly, while searching for indications as to the identity of my small green visitor, I came across a discussion of the green grasshopper's role as a spirit animal.  According to this summary: "When a grasshopper spirit animal comes leaping into your life, it signifies your need to make a tremendous leap of faith."  Although I can't say I'm one to look to psychic signs for guidance, I've decided to view her presence as a positive.

View of the harbor from the back garden: the marine layer is back!

There's light on the horizon.  Our remodeling project will get finished, eventually.  My garden will be restored to health, in time.  Cooler temperatures and rain will return, if not immediately then soon.  Congress and the voting public will constructively address the circumstances confronting our nation.  I'm going to make sure my green friend finds another dahlia to perch on before her current roost is tossed.

For more Wednesday Vignettes, visit Anna at Flutter & Hum.


All material © 2012-2019 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

Wednesday Vignette: Grasshopper Ghost

Cruising through my garden one recent morning, I caught sight of what I thought was a mysterious new luminescent bug hiding within the leaves of Acacia cognata 'Cousin Itt'.  Upon closer inspection, it appeared transparent and had a shape disturbingly like that of a grasshopper.

Was this the ghost of a grasshopper?

The photo is admittedly not that sharp but then when have you seen a photo of a ghost that was?

This husk left by a molting grasshopper is my Wednesday Vignette.  To see other interesting images, visit Anna at Flutter & Hum.


All material © 2012-2016 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

Sap Suckers and Plant Chompers

Spring decorates the garden with beautiful blooms and adds an auditory accompaniment of birdsong.    On a less pleasant note, it also marks the return of some ugly garden visitors: sap-sucking and plant-chomping bugs.  The aphids showed up first, following what was probably the last rain of our short wet season.  I wasn't paying sufficient attention to the garden at that point and they infested the buds of my climbing rose before I realized they'd arrived.  A good hosing wasn't enough to take care of the problem and I had to resort to cutting back the worst of the damage and giving the shrub a dousing of insecticidal soap.

Too many aphids, too few ladybugs

The grasshoppers showed up next.  I don't recall seeing them this early in the season before.  I found evidence that something was munching my new Stevia plant before I noticed the culprit himself.

Chomped up Stevia plant

Grasshopper meditating on his next meal

The bugs shown in the pictures above are stand-ins for the ones I found in my garden.  My brother, a much better photographer than I'll ever be, provided the photos.  He also provided the picture below, constructed with the assistance of software using other pictures he'd taken, in an effort to reconstruct an epic battle he says he witnessed between a swallow and a grasshopper.

How I wish I could train the birds in my yard to hunt grasshoppers!  That's not to say that the birds in my garden don't earn the seed I provide for them.  They spend a lot of time poking around in the garden beds and lawn.

Fuzzy picture (taken through window glass) of a sparrow on the hunt

However, some birds spend more time primping than hunting.

Fluffed up after his first dip

Drying out after his 2nd dip

Other than the bees, I've yet to see many good bugs in my garden.

Carpenter bee in flight

The ladybug pictured at the top of this post was found in a garden my brother visited some 50 miles from me.  I haven't seen any butterflies yet either, although my brother has.

Monarch butterfly in waiting

Gulf Fritillary (male)

Gulf Fritillary (female)

All insect pictures were provided courtesy of ericnp.net.