Cricket, anyone?

Hundreds of crickets, clicking and clacking their way all over the yards here this week. I can barely walk from the house to the coop without being side-swiped and attacked by crickets. Alright, maybe it's not really an attack, and I know that crickets don't bite, but that doesn't mean I want them on me or my clothes, and that is exactly what's happening here. Every blessed day.

This is when I really miss having chickens.... those hens ate up every cricket in sight... and the few crickets I did see back then were very small ones, not steroid-laced mega-crickets with a jumping capability of thirty feet.

At this week's Waldorf Wednesday, a few of the ladies were talking about going on 'an adventure' to walk around the woods and the creek that meanders through all of our properties here. "Wear boots," one of them said.... "because of the poison ivy and the snakes."

And then this particular neighbor asked me if I would like to join them.   Me?

I assured all the ladies that none of them would enjoy their walk in the woods if I were along with them. I can't even deal with one spider or one cricket or one scorpion on my own property, so why on this blessed bug-filled earth would I want to go trekking in the blessed woods looking to see what's growing and living back there?

I already know what's growing..... flowering trees, pretty wildflowers, small streams coming from the creek-bed, and musical waterfalls (when we have enough rain) filtering down through the hills. As for what's living back in those woods...... take your pick: raccoons, possums, armadillos, coyotes, deer, bob-cats, birds (from bluebirds to vultures), foxes, snakes.... and everything else that goes bump in the blessed night.