Project Green Thumbs: The number one rule of gardening

A young girl rolled along on a 10-speed, her honey-wheat ponytail trailing. She flashed a bright grin in my direction, waving and saying hello (polite, unlike many of the tweens in our neighborhood). I lifted a topsoil-covered garden glove, smiling from the top of the flowerbed.

10 seconds later...

"JESUS KEY-RIST ALMIGHTY, GAWD DAMMIT, SON OF A... AHHHHHHHHH!"

Slap, slap, slap, hop, shimmy, stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp, shudder.

What. The. Hell.

***
I've said it before and I'll say it again... Gardening rule #1: If you feel like something is crawling on you, that's because it IS.

Gardening rule #1a: When said something is a wildebeest-sized praying mantis, all bets are off.

Despite the slap, slap, slapping on my part, he lived and stayed in the yard watching me finish the planting, plotting his next attack. The hardest part? I thought we were friends.

Okay, so I *might* have a hyperbole problem, but the feeling of spindly but sizable legs and arms creepy crawling up my body? Even writing about it right now gives me the shivers. I can only imagine what I looked like yesterday hopping, slapping and swearing a blue streak on my front porch. (Luckily, bicycle girl was well out of range when the performance started.)

Oh, the joys of playing in the dirt!

xoxo,
shawna

Other Project Green Thumbs posts:
If praying mantises could talk
Pests and protectors
Aerobic gardening dos and don'ts
Garden update
Failure