Sometimes I Just Shriek

Sometimes it’s hard to handle the creepy crawlies that inhabit my garden.

Sometimes I let out rather loud shrieks when you least expect it. Take, for example, the bugs above. I was talking to my son outside and went to see if the Jacob’s Ladder had gone to seed.

I grabbed the plant, brought it towards my blind, aging eyes and promptly let out a shriek worthy of a horror movie heroine.

I think that part of what I screamed  was “Oh my god are you SERIOUS???”.

I am never quite sure who I am asking. The garden gods, fate, chance, a superior being..but it’s some one. Anyone who cares to give me an answer.

I am hoping whatever I screamed didn’t involve new curse words that seared onto my sons brain, secreted away until the appropriate time comes in the school playground this year.

When they pull me aside to talk to me after school about my sons colorful vocabulary, I’ll just show the teacher that photo and ask them what THEY would have said.

So. What is it? Come on garden world, tell me please. There also seems to be more than one type of bug as well if you look closely above.

They are all over my Jacob’s Ladder.

And they make me scream when there are 50 on a tiny segment of plant.

Speaking of screaming, I think the neighbor across the alley is used to the sound of random little shrieks coming from the garden.

He no longer comes running with a rake in his hand to save the day.

Now he knows that everytime I go in the garden, there is a grasshopper.

I…hate…grasshoppers.  Hate.

They are clicky, jumpy little mother truckers who make me shiver.

They want to jump at me and eat my eyeballs. Or something like that.

So this evil creature was perched on my potatoes.

The potatoes that I wanted to dig.

They are always on the plants I want to harvest. They are everywhere. They thwart my every move.

A brief chronicle of my gardening time:

Dig dig dig SCREAM.

Weed weed weed SHRIEK.

Pick pick pick “Die you little #@$%%#”.

WHAP WHAP WHAP.

“EEEeeeeeeew.”