This morning, I went to weed my garden a bit, and take inventory of all the things that are flourishing.
It seems as though I was too late with the insecticide for my squash. He has been bore’d. It was nice knowing him.
I was weeding a bit, and counting the amount of stakes I had to purchase..
The heat, and the subsequent rain storms we’ve gotten, have really done wonders for my garden. A lot of the plants are so tall and heavy that they are beginning to droop, and need some help standing.
I’ll have to make a garden post soon!
I was weeding close to my surprise tomato plant.. (one I didn’t plant, but showed up ready to go anyway..)
When I spotted this beautiful creature.
A brand new cicada, drying his wings on my little picket fence. Above his crusty old body.
As soon as I saw him, I listened closer, and of course..
Cicadas singing all over my neighborhood.
FYI.
“Male cicadas have loud noisemakers called “tymbals” on the sides of the abdominal base. Their “singing” is not the stridulation (where one structure is rubbed against another) of many other familiar sound-producing insects like crickets: the tymbals are regions of the exoskeleton that are modified to form a complex membrane with thin, membranous portions and thickened “ribs”. Contracting the internal tymbal muscles produces a clicking sound as the tymbals buckle inwards. As these muscles relax, the tymbals return to their original position producing another click. The interior of the male abdomen is substantially hollow to amplify the resonance of the sound. A cicada rapidly vibrates these membranes, and enlarged chambers derived from the tracheae make its body serve as a resonance chamber, greatly amplifying the sound. The cicada modulates the sound by positioning its abdomen toward or away from the substrate. Additionally, each species has its own distinctive “song”.[1]”
How neat! I thought they were just like crickets, but they are far more intricate than that.
A song.
A morning lesson to listen closer.
Pay attention.
Sing.
