Garden Diary Stories

Hello to all

I joined here some years ago but been inactive last years (sorry). One my hobby besides of gardening is writing. During last year I have kept "Garden diary" and wrote short stories about all little fellows (insects, ants, spiders, flies etc.) I have met while working in my garden. These stories tell about real meetings I have had with those creatures. About those meetings with them I have to say that the smaller some insect is the bigger personality it has.

Stories are not in chronological order.

Garden diary, 3 September 2023:

"This morning I met a very special creature on the garden fence next to the tomato bed. He was totally green and had also quite strange round body shape. I thought he might be some sort of alien from the outer space. He waved its tentacles to me and wished me good morning, although I was just expecting that, like in the science fiction movies, he should say "Earth resident! Take me to your leader!” but not at this time.

I then asked him who he might really be or where he is from as he was new one to me. He introduced himself as a green shield bug (Palomena prasina) and that he had never heard about the Planet Mars. He just came to this fence from a tomato leaf, as he said.

When I told that I haven't often met any such green creatures, he shyly told me that he is still a nymph. The fourth skin creation is now over and "Doesn't this green suit me quite well anyway? At least I like it. It's such a summery color too", to which I of course agreed. A very fresh color indeed. But because of the autumn season, he added that soon he will follow the newest trends of fashion and will change his coloring more yellow. Tone-on-tone, he stated.

"And then I want new boots too. Keeps my feet dry you see. Yes, we green bugs are always noticed as we are so fashion conscious. I'm just going to the gobbler so I am in hurry now. See ya!"


Garden Diary, 13 September 2022:

Today I picked some cherry tomatoes from my garden and got two big bowls of them. Although the majority are still green, they will ripe quite well also indoors. I poured the tomatoes on the table and immediately the riot started. Someone screamed like a fire siren among the tomatoes and there was no end. What an earth was happening now?

I carefully rolled the tomatoes aside and finally found the screamer. There it sat on the table and squealed so that the tentacles shaked. "Flood! Landslide! Rebellion! Murder!" and so on. I tried to talk soothingly and then finally, the poor one calmed down a little and the screams changed to a disapproving murmur. "Dragged out of the bed! Don't even knock! What exactly is this kind of behavior? Wouldn't have happened in the good old days..."

I then asked sorry, apologized for my thoughtlessness, told that I had to start harvesting because of colder nights and autumn rain season starting, but it hardly convinced much. He said that even though he is small, he expects at least some kind of respect from those bigger than him.

They, the sloe bugs (Dolycoris baccarum) have their honor and at next summer I probably wouldn't want to face the revenge of the whole sloe bug population. Well, I didn't want.

I carried that little fellow back to the tomato bed and promised many many times I´ll be much more careful in the future with my garden´s little creatures. In spite of all my reassurances it still staring at me disapprovingly. However, let's hope that the sloe bug will calms down and forgives me in time. The revenge of sloe bugs might be horrible... at least if they happen to settle in my raspberry bush. Yuck!"


Garden Diary, 22 August 2023:

"When I was today in my garden, I noticed few spider webs was made between haystacks. They were really beautiful, nature's works of art, and probably the web makers had seen a lot of trouble while weaving them.

The spiders were still at work. One wire was tightened, the other was loosened, a support wire was put there and the trash that had flown into the wires was picked up. Another spider carefully drying drops of water from his web. A lot of work they had. For some moments I stopped to listen what they were chatting together.

"...there are probably no more flies like in the early summer, if you remember, at that time they were the size of a sparrow and oh so juicy... it's been these dry weathers that have shrunk the flies..."

"Sure I remember but luckily it's rained now. I got a few flies yesterday and they actually tasted pretty good after they had just been on some mushroom, funny taste indeed..."

"...but did I already told you about the running spider I talked at last week.. at first I thought it was running towards the web, but it dodged at the last moment. Then we chatted for a while. It was actually a good thing that it didn't get into the web, they are so horrible tenacious when they rush from one place to another all the time... So, I said is it spider at all when it doesn't have a web, so guess what it said... well, that´s why because it lives in this modern age and uses wireless spider webs... so I almost got mad for such a joke ... it must have noticed it when it ran away as soon as it had said that..."

The spider and it´s wireless web. Did it has Wi-Fi, I wondered while listening chatting of the garden spiders (Araneus diadematus)."