My surprise today!!

As you get to know me you will realize that my mother passed down her love of nature..I remember riding in the car and she would be ooing and ahhing about clouds and tree colors and you name it..I would just roll my eyes thinking.."Really?"  I mean come on...

UNTIL:  Yes it happened..I fast found myself becoming my MOTHER!!  Then I was blessed with three grandsons who are as normal as a boy can get!!  They love toads and worms..you name it..  Eli lives close to me so we get more time together than I get with Nolan and Everett..This summer we have watched as mud daubers picked my porch to build their nests..Did you know that there are three types of mud daubers?  Neither did I until we looked them up..there is a pipe organ dauber, a black/yellow dauber and a blue dauber..The pipe organ is just like it sounds..there will be cylindrical tubes side by side, looking like a pipe organ made out of mud.  The black/yellow is the one that Eli and I watched all summer..She would come in and pack that mud into little 1" cylinders, go sting a spider and bring it back and lay an egg on it and then close the hole up tight smoothing out the entire nest as she went.  The Blue dauber is lazy..this girl finds an old nest and uses it rather than work hard all summer!  Even in the insect world there are the lazies!!  lol  They do not sting unless antagonized and I assure you all we did was watch..lol

Then I had a weekend with all three of the boys and they were catching lightening bugs, toads, night crawlers!  I have great pictures of the event..So you can see we enjoy it all..In my previous post I have a spider there..Everyone shakes their head at me because if a spider is in my house I catch it and throw it outside..unless of course it is those black jumping things and they deserve everything they get!!  lol

As I am sitting here at my computer table, out of the corner of my eye I spy a locust shell!  Eli is fascinated with locust and we saw nearly every stage of it's entry into this world.  We missed it coming out of the ground but we saw it walk up the tree, develop the shell, crack the shell, hang halfway out of it and then finally attach to the tree to let it's wings dry..So fascinating!

So to get to today's story..I work with developmentally disabled and my client and I went to the grocery today..  Before we went in I saw some Asters on clearance for $4 so I picked one up and put it in my cart..As we were walking I looked at the blooms and there he was!!!  DO you see him?

There was a grasshopper sitting in my plant!!!!  He rode all over the store with us!!  As I was checking out they charged me $6.99 not the $4 so I went outside and got the sign , came back in with my receipt  and showed it too them..They have a policy that if it is not in the system correct, you get $5 and  the overcharge..
I tried to explain that   I only wanted the difference but she insisted!  I said..  I get all my money back, plus the flower and the grasshopper for free!!!  Man!!  I love my Kroger's!!!   LOL

I put the flower in my trunk complete with the grasshopper because I wanted him to have a grassy place to call home, not concrete..When I unloaded my flower..and this might creep some of you out..lol..he was not on the plant!!  So I looked all over my trunk, in my grocery sacks as I unloaded them, still no hopper..I looked all over the plant again this time in the greenery part and still nothing so right now I have no idea where he is!!  LOL!!  But that is fine with me..He'll show up somewhere!!  And he will have a better chance of surviving than he did in town with all that concrete..