Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Cicadas in the Summer

I'm currently working on our homeschool photo portfolio for the 2013-2014 school year, and I'm spending an inordinately long time perusing my summer photos.

Such warm! Such green! Such outside!

During my perusal, I rediscovered these photos. I'd been inside or out, puttering on one thing or another, when the children called out to me--"Come see the cicada!"

Indiana is known for its cicadas, and we've got plenty of them, but even so, it's not so usual to see a live one, nice and green, freshly shorn of its old exoskeleton. I ran to get the camera, and shot these photos while Will took no notice, lost in her study:






Although warm and green would feel nice right now, we are nevertheless happy in our very first winter in our house. Will is planning a butterfly garden AND a koi pond, and I purchased far too many growing things that will arrive and expect to be planted in the spring.

Add to that a large future order of netting and steel mesh. I hear that chickens love gardens and raccoons love koi.

3 comments:

  1. Great photos!

    We just got our seed catalog in the mail. I am pretty excited about ordering seeds this year. I have a dream of growing and dehydrating enough greens this summer to last me all of next winter.

    If you get monarchs, make sure you track down and plant some milkweed. My MIL has milkweed all over her yard and is always so happy when the monarchs come back. Such amazing creatures.

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  2. Oh, milkweed! I definitely need lots of milkweed! I don't trust myself to identify it in the wild, so I'll have to look around in nurseries. I ordered some plants online a couple of years ago, but it was pretty late in the season when I got them--too late for more monarchs.

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  3. I bet if you make a request on FB or through freecycle/craigslist, you could get some milkweed for free. Most people are happy to get rid of it.

    If we make it to Iowa in March, I could probably mail you some...

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