Yesterday I didn’t work until 1:30pm. That gave me morning time to work in my garden. I did a lot of pruning. The walking path has gotten a little overgrown, so I tried to clear it a little. The osmanthus bush was where I started. I decided to trim it to have bare lower branches. The obligatory ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures:
BEFORE:
The prickly leaves were much to close to the path.
AFTER:
Much cleaner looking.
The most exciting thing about pruning the osmanthus was what I discovered in its branches:
It’s about the size of a fig.
It’s a praying mantis egg case. Woo hoo! Finding a mantis in your garden is a sign of a healthy environment. Plus, mantids eat all kinds of bad bugs. Once this egg case opens, I’ll have hundreds of mantids! Unless they eat each other.
Yea, that “unless they eat each other” part is a bit of a bummer….
When we still had larger shrubs there, we once had baby mantises in the front of the house, all walking up our brick. Pretty cool. I fear a resident feline dispatched a few of them but until then it made me feel pretty special. Congrats on being chosen as a mantid home – best wishes on the hatching and consequent bug consumption!
P.S. Thurman weeded and mulched the front garden yesterday – it looks wonderful. This afternoon I hope to finish around the Japanese maple, too. Then all we need is to pick the lawn mower up from its spring tuning and do the grass and viola! House Beautiful. Thanks again for your labor of love on that last year.
Wow – I’ve never seen a mantis egg case before. How exciting! How soon will they hatch?
We have a smoke bush (I don’t know it’s fancy name) on the playground at school and I have been (following the directions of our plant expert) cutting it back (because I have the saw). We had some professors and college students from China visit yesterday and they were asking about the maimed bush. I just shrugged and smiled. No language barrier could explain the mess.
Now that’s a word I’ll have to use “Maimed” Only I don’t have a “Pruner” (meaning person) or “Maimer”….I guess I could use either rather than have NONE!!!…..In Which Aisle At Walmart Can You Buy One??? <3 Aunt Bev 🙂
Did you find the praying mantis? Those things camouflage themselves so well.
Cool!! I think you should consider setting up a mantis-cam with 24 hour coverage! I wonder how many will hatch & survive? It could be hundreds! (Was the headless carcass of the male anyway nearby?)