Hunting. . .

I found this little mantis trying to get out of my house by way of the window in the back door.  I scooped him up and put him on my pineapple sage.  I chose the the sage plant because something has be nibbling on its leaves.  The other day I found a small, green cave cricket on my deck near my herbs, and as I bent to release the mantis I saw another on a large leaf of the plant.  So, I put the young mantis on that leaf.

He made short work of moving up the leaf and attacking the small cricket.  He had to reach up to a smaller leaf above as the cricket tried to make its escape, but he snatched it up effortlessly.  I let him be, but kept an eye on him from afar.  After all, how often do you get to watch a praying mantis eat?  

After a bit, I went back to check on how my little mantis was doing.  A tiny portion of his meal remained in his grasp, but he turned to look at me.  In that moment a silent thank you exchanged between human and insect.  I thanked my mantis friend for eating the pest on my plant.  He, in turn, thanked me for releasing him from the confusing entrapment of the window, and then for offering him a tasty meal.


While examining the progress of my wild raspberries, I discovered a surprise hiding under a particularly berry-filled portion of the bush.

Black raspberries!  These beauties are growing on a small wild bush at the edge of my raspberry patch. I was surprised to find them there because I thought black raspberries were a cultivar--meaning that they are a type of plant created by humans through selective processes.  But these are definitely wild black raspberries.  They even have the textural qualities of the wild red raspberries.  I'll let you know how they taste later.


The red raspberries are doing great, too.  My first harvest yielded a dozen of each type.  There are probably hundreds of red raspberries ripening to please my (and my family's) palate with their melt-in-your-mouth sweetness.  I love wild raspberries for that reason:  they truly melt in your mouth.  Other strains or cultivars have a fuzzy, peach-like texture, and you have to chew them.  When you pop a wild raspberry in your mouth, you can suck the juices, and thus the berry, to oblivion in seconds.  No chewing.  No fuzz.  Just pure sweetness.