Peering Mantis

Mantises hatched out of ootheca

I have been checking the praying mantis ootheca every day, hoping to catch the little ones in the act of hatching. I missed the actual event, but saw them very soon after it had happened. The wine barrel of herbs was just swimming with mantii*! They are ridiculously small, and numerous... I predict that soon they will become hard to find, as they begin to eat each other for sustenance and spread throughout the garden. As someone who likes odd pets, I find them to be terribly adorable, as they try out their spindly new legs.

Little mantisling wanders across the oregano.

A baby mantis takes a moment in the thyme

Yes, this mantis is perching on a rosemary leaf. It is TINY!  I never would have noticed the copper line across their eyes if it weren't for my camera's zoom.

I am so thrilled to have witnessed the mantises' birthday, and hope that they will be happy here in the garden, gorging their little tummies on a variety of insect pests.

*Mantii and mantisling are not real words

There's A Creature Lurking In The Garden!

I have been trying to seduce the neighbor's cat. It spends a very large amount of time in our backyard, underneath the zen bench or along the edges of the fence napping and prowling. It very obviously thinks of our backyard as its territory. Said cat doesn't have a collar, and is very, VERY afraid of us. I have to say, I'm a little offended that the feline dislikes me so... all animals like me!

And so, the plan these past few months has been acting with indifference toward the cat. I've found that the best way to scare off a new cat (aside from shouting “BOO” and waving my hands in the air) is to act like you're interested in it and desperately need its attention. After a few months of this behavior, the paranoid kitty is finally beginning to see me as less of a threat: it doesn't run immediately upon my entry into the garden, and it lets me make eye contact every once in a while.

 The cat-who-will-not-be-my-friend is letting its guard down. It now only peers at me with completely evil intent. Shot with 10x zoom through the window from the safety of my bedroom.

I will win the cat's trust and affection... I will win this war of wills! It has been recommended by a friend that the juice from a tuna can is a cat's weakness... offering some will be my future battle plan.

And maybe someday I can convince the cat to stop digging up my seedlings and depositing his poop in the raised bed!

Pea Flower

Happy Summer Solstice!

Today's the day I was supposed to harvest the garlic, if I had planted them on the winter solstice. They would have been brown and dead by now, the stalks fallen over with no sign of life. I did not plant them on the winter solstice, however... in fact, it was spring! And so, I leave the garlic in the ground to continue growing and hopefully to get bigger.

There was a row of garlics that had been under-watered on vacation, and they looked either dead or ready to harvest. I dug them up, and there were super tiny garlic bulbs, the whole things are about the size of the individual cloves I had planted. They're terribly cute, and dastardly potent. The outside is white, but the inner paper sheaths are a vivid purple.

I braided them together, as it has always been a goal to make a garlic braid. I suppose that technically I have reached that goal... but hopefully my next garlic braid is a bit larger! :)

I hung the garlic braid on a hook with the rosemary... there is just something really satisfying about seeing herbs hanging in the kitchen.





I hope everyone out there is enjoying the longest day of summer.

And in other news, my husband has started a blog! You can visit it at http://improbablerogue.blogspot.com/

Promotion News

Since I had mentioned the promotion before, there may be some who are waiting for news... nope, I didn't get it, but don't despair! Half of me wanted the job for the title, prestige, and increase in pay... the other half of me dreaded the loss of time and sanity it would have caused. There is an enormous sense of relief welling from within me.

My workplace keeps adding more and more to our workload every 6 months, and with just two people running the show, we are going to be unable to give perfect performances this time... as a perfectionist this bothers me, but as supervisor, I would have been held fully responsible. Now I must go home at the appointed time, and won't be the one working 12-hour days on top of 3 hours of commute.

This is good news for you, readers! All that extra time I would have spent at work, I can instead focus on this blog, cultivating the garden, caring for higher-maintenance pets, and generally enjoying life. :)

Cactus Flowers in Utah

Back Home

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Wow, what a vacation! Over the past 3 weeks, my husband and I dove with reckless abandon into shale quarries, hiked until we were the only tourists around, and saw the most beautiful of sights. This is a gardening blog so I'm not going to bore you with too many details here, but there were so many fantastic photos (including details of fossils and several flowers) that I will eventually share more on the sister-blog Leaves In My Cup.

Trilobites! So many trilobites. We spent 2 hours splitting shale and putting fossils in our buckets, and came out with so much loot. The vast majority of what we took home will end up scattered amongst the garden plants, back on the earth where they belong.

 Hunting for trilobites

We saw some of the most gorgeous sunsets I've ever seen, and on a 7-mile hike in Arches we saw several, well, arches.

People were pulling off to the side of the freeway just to watch this one.

Delicate Arch is the one seen on Utah's license plates... it is much more impressive in person.

Making a few arches of my own!

Though it was a grand adventure, I'm very glad to be home... the vast openness and rock formations of Utah may be gorgeous, but I was raised in an oak forest with shade and moist air, and my spirit is glad to be back. In my head I had started to refer to California as the Land of the Plants.