Okay my Virginia gardening friends…or just anyone in the know…what will this cocoon turn into? I found three on my buddleia (Butterfly Bushes) in the butterfly garden I put into the perennial flower beds last year. They are each about two inches long, fat, and beautifully ridged shades of gray, taupe, and brown, with a bit of red cast to them. Am I hatching something wonderful, like a monarch or swallow tail butterfly, or Mothra?
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Snakes in the Garden: The Truth About Snakes
Snakes in the garden scare many people. I used to be one of them. I thought copperheads lurked around every stone, just waiting to strike. October marks out 17th year living on Seven Oaks Farm in Central Virginia. Over the years, I have gotten to know, appreciate, and love the many snakes we have seen…
Jonathan Apples: What Are They and How to Grow Them
We didn’t set out to grow Jonathan apples, but this is the variety that thrives in our zone 7B garden. We purchased seedlings from the Arbor Day Society and planted our home orchard in December 2007. Today, we have many fruit trees, including our beloved Jonathans that are my new favorite apple. Here’s how to…
Stuffed Peppers Without Rice Recipe
A no-salt, nutritarian, vegan dinner that’s easy to make on a busy night I made this stuffed peppers without rice recipe last night for dinner. It uses my confetti salad recipe with some added spices for the filling. At this time of year, when fresh tomatoes and peppers are abundant in the garden, it’s the…
Fig Salad Recipe: Figs and Cantaloupe with Basil Dressing
I promised to share this French fig salad recipe with you. This recipe originally came from a cookbook by Georgeanne Brennan called Savoring France: Recipes and Reflections on French Cooking. I updated the recipe to remove the dairy and fat. The result is a flavorful, lower calorie dessert that sparkles with the essence of the…
Phil said immediately, ” It’s a praying mantis. They’ll have about 150 babies in each cocoon. Make sure they stay outside. It’s good to have alot of them around.They eat insects.” We have seen the babies right after hatching. They cling tenaciously to leaves and sway in the breeze. And always, they remind us to pray. 🙂 Annie
That would be wonderful! I’ve seen praying mantis egg cases in the woods, but they usually dangle under a branch, and these egg cases are firmly attached to the leaves. I go out every day and visit them. We left them and didn’t trim down the bushes….even if it was a moth, I’d have left it. I can’t wait until they hatch. And I love praying mantis. We had one on a window screen last fall that just stayed with us until the cold weather set in. We’d go and say hello to it every day.