Got a lot of red tips cut and loaded this afternoon. The last two times I underestimated how many to cut to make a load. This time I overestimated. Didn't finish until almost dark. There were 20. Eleven more to go. One is still dangling. Visitor today on one of the hedge cuttings on the deck. I've never seen a brown one before. Found this while looking for something last week. Then forgot what I was looking for. It is solid wood, 11" long, and variously named ... a kitchen pestle, a kitchen maul, or a potato masher. Wonder who that belonged to?
@Nancy Hart Most Praying Mantises I've seen were able to change their color chameleon-like to the color of their surroundings. Seen them ranging from beige, almost white, to deep green. Maybe all Mantises cannot. The largest I've seen was 4 inches long! They appear here in the Desert fairly often fairly often. I've seen some recently that must have just hatched, 1/4 inch long, so tiny, I had to look very closely. Frank
Hey, @Frank Sanoica. I've seen some little ones too. Not quite that little. They sure are cute. But always green.
I remember when I was a child, one of my friends found an egg case in a field and tool it home, keeping it in his bedroom. One morning he awoke to find the little critters all over his bedroom, to the dismay of his parents. I don't recall how they got them all out of the house.
@Don Alaska A similar experience in grade school, a buddy found a twig with an egg case on it and brought it to class. The teacher placed it in an UNCOVERED glass aquarium. When we returned on Monday, the windowsill was crawling with micro-mantes!
I was disappointed none of those yellow garden spiders that hatched this spring seems to have taken up residence on the porch this year. There were hundreds of them and they all seemed healthy when they took off. I let them go exactly where the egg sacs were deposited.
I'm half joking, but this really is annoying... In the morning and evening the (Southern ) dew is so dense, the tires on the self-propelled lawn mower just spin in the wet grass. It's usually too hot to mow in midday. I think I need off road mud tires. Like this? It looks like they only make chains for riding mowers. {sigh} This man put screws in his tires. What if they fall out in the yard? This man took bicycle tire tread and screwed it to his tires.
Only 4 red tips left to bring down, plus the dangler, but 3 of them are big ones with a lot of branches at the bottom. Two more loads. At most 3. Another mystery. Found in a kitchen drawer at the farm. My guess is some kind of whetstone only because of the drawer it was in, but it's smooth as a baby's bottom and heavy --- only 4.5" x 2" x 1" and weighs 1.5 pounds! So I Googled whetstones and came up with possibly an Arkansas whetstone? But they don't mention the weight. Or maybe it isn't a whetstone at all. It looks like it had green paint on the side at one time.
It could be an Arkansas stone, @Nancy Hart. They are smooth and hard and used to put a very fine edge on metal cutting tools, such as planes and chisels. I also used to use one on one of my fine knives.