…but not out
Sometimes, even I am humbled before the awesomeness that is Nature.
Today, in a effort to get out of the house and at least do a little something in my garden, I set myself two tasks: water things and set out praying mantis egg cases.
See, every fall, when I’m cutting back shrubs and dying annuals and pruning trees, I check each cutting for mantis egg cases. And every year, I find several. Not wanting to toss them into the compost piles with the rest of the cuttings, I set those branches aside in a sheltered area. Then, once things warm up in the spring, I set the egg cases in among the greenery so they can hatch. Most do, tho some fall prey to spiders or birds. Still, every year sees many mantises roaming my garden, voraciously eating up bugs that would do my plants harm (and some that would help, since the praying mantis is not at all a picky eater).
But in all these years, I have never actually seen the egg cases hatch. Until today.
Today, I went to check the egg case on my clematis and lo and behold, the hatch was on! I must have stood there for 15 minutes watching the teensy little creatures wriggle out of the egg case, hand by a tiny thread as they dried out, then crawl away in search of denser cover. I moved several into the lush native fuchsias that grow at the base of the clematis. A few more got moved to the bay laurel tree.
It’s pretty damned cool to think that many of these 1/8 inch long babies will, by summers end, be 3 or 4 inch long females, heavily laden with eggs that they will lay all over the outside of my house and among the plants in the garden.
Nature rules!
The Dociverse Blog 