I’ve been mowing the lawn off and on over the last two days. It hadn’t been mowed for about 3 weeks and therefore had areas that are stunningly thick. I’m not a lawn purist so my lawn consists of whatever grass we seeded it with and whatever else decided to grow. There is a lot of red clover blooming right now.
My problem with mowing is that I have a tendency to stop for bugs. I swerve around butterflies. This makes interesting patterns in the finished lawn. No one has ever asked why my lawn looks like that and I’m glad because I can just imagine the stares I would get when I said, “You see, there was this butterfly that didn’t want to move….”
But this weekend I hit a new level of braking for bugs. I actually started stopping and moving bugs to safe havens. Why? Because they were baby praying mantises (manti?). I’m not sure if I saw several different ones or just one highly mobile one. But they definately seemed to be worth stopping and watching while they maneuvered out of the way. The one today was just not making good progress so I moved him to the flower bed. I hope I see them around as adults. I saw a huge one on a rosebush last year. At first when I glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye I thought it was bird in the bush. The one I gave a lift to today was about 1.5 inches long and a delicate light green color. Very cute and very dignified as she accepted her ride to the flowers as if it was the most normal thing on earth.
You are not alone! A friend of mine when he was working in a nursery garden was told to weed the plants. The first day, he did exactly as told and pulled out the weeds. But he went home that night and couldn’t sleep because of all the destruction he’d caused. So, the next day he began transplanting the weeds to the great outdoors. Some weeks later, when his boss found out what he was up to, she shook her head, looked at him, and then said, “You’re one of a kind, Joe. Do it your way.”
I remember praying mantises are good for the garden, but I’ve forgotten why.