Easter has been pretty busy here at the Dwelling Place monastery as you can imagine. We have just said goodbye to the last guest, finished the dishes, taken off our shoes and are getting ready to just chill. But I have to share a garden experience with you first.
Yesterday afternoon a friend and I went to a local eatery, Lizzie B’s. I love to take people to the local restaurants that are popping up here in Prestonsburg. On the way home, we stopped at the Big Sandy Community and Technical College’s community garden, another of my favorite “things to do while visiting Prestonsburg.” We walked around the garden looking at the peas, kale and broccoli while I explained its history.
This is one gross looking thing!
Suddenly I was totally grossed out by something stuck to an over-wintered blackberry branch. “What is that?” I exclaimed. “Cool,” my friend remarked, “it’s a praying mantis egg sack and look they are hatching!” Sure enough when you looked closely you could see tiny tan baby praying mantises climbing up and down the branch.
Apparently from what I have read, these little guys will eat any bug they can wrestle to the ground-including their own siblings so I hope that at least some of the several hundred little mantis buddies live to help us keep the community garden bad bug free.
You can just see a tiny mantis on the top of her hand (it looks like a line with antenna) and another on the blackberry stem.
Of course I didn’t have my camera with me so my friend took these with her phone. I’m operating on the poor picture is better than no picture theory. I really hope this is a sign of a healthy garden this year at the Big Sandy.
Thank you for sharing this resurrection like story! Very fun you got to witness such a special emergence.