HiveGarden: Welcome baby grasshoppers!

It was one of a kind moment for a gardener to see his flowers blooming and producing fruits. I, myself, have been a gardener for over 15 years. My father’s lineage was born into farming and that is the reason why I love planting too. My growth in farming helps me cope with discipline and patience. Gardeners would agree with me when I say that when you start gardening, your patience and ability to expand your patience would grow significantly.

However, a sad event happened on our farm. 80% of the farm field was sold by the original owner and 20% was left today. We were forced to leave farming, and switch to gardening. In our subdivision, I think gardening here is what you call urban gardening since the place was quite more crowded than before.

One thing a gardener would leave him onguard and make him mad is when his plants are being attacked by pests. I experienced a lot of bad news in gardening. For example, my tomatoes and Chinese cabbage were pestered by different insects. I think those are flea beetles, cabbage looper and cabbage worms. My father wanted to have an insecticide-free garden, it is difficult if there are many pests.

So lately, I woke up in the morning and checked my garden in the back of our chicken’s cages. I was surprised to see a lot of baby grasshoppers in my Oregano plants. I didn't see them yesterday when I watered my plants. Perhaps they migrated last night.

In this photo, you can see 11 baby grasshoppers. They were all looking at me with their big eyes. As if telling me, “what this lad is doing?” I am actually scared to picture them because they might jump at me and bro, I would really run.

Fun fact: Insets are undergoing a cycle in their bodies called metamorphosis. There are two types of metamorphosis, incomplete and complete one. For grasshoppers, baby grasshoppers are called nymphs.

This next photo has plenty of nymphs. Goodness! Look at those nymphs in one pad leaf of oregano. No matter what side I look at, I think they are looking at me. Their big eyes are intriguing and scaring me like crazy. In this photo, there are 33 nymphs. Correct me if I am wrong if that is the exact count of nymphs here.

Fun fact: Grasshoppers have ears, but their ears actually cannot be found in the head. Their ears are found in their abdomen. The eardrum is what you called a tympanal organ. They produced music too. Wonderful, eh?

This part of the leaf has 6 nymphs. If you noticed the pattern of their eyes. There are two colors, black and yellowish white. I tried to get one, but it jumped from my hand. I was literally scared because of their numbers. I didn’t picture their whole clan in my oregano because in the middle of it. There are so many of them hiding.

I didn’t spot and see their mother in my oregano. But a few days later, they were all gone. After a week, I spotted another giant grasshopper in my plants. I think this grasshopper was hurt because if you look closely, the last leg was missing. I slowly approached it and held its back. Goodness! It was really big and the wings were sturdy. When I finished taking the photo, I moved it to the grassland part of our yard.

It was really not a good time for any gardener who experienced their plants being destroyed and eaten by pests. I don’t consider grasshoppers a pest now since they just ate a few of my oregano. But I hope they don’t come back with so many numbers and lay eggs again. That would be very problematic. I love grasshoppers when they behave well and eat other pests too. The cycle is called the food chain.

_{Hi, welcome to Denn's humble world! He is a bonafide student of Cavite State University taking up BS Computer Science. He is a father of 10, 10 rabbits. He is an introvert and extrovert person, meaning is he ambivert? He loves gardening and collecting plants. His hobbies are to raise rabbits, watch series and write haikus. He’s here to fulfill his dream to read his own writings.}

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