This evening I went out to the garden to do a bit of weeding and to pick some veggies for supper. There are always weeds to pull, and bushes to trim back. Since we had a nice rain over the weekend, I didn't need to do any watering.
While I was picking green beans, I saw a bit of movement on one of the leaves. When I looked closer, I saw that it was a praying mantis, the first I've seen this year. I hurried inside to get my camera in the hope I'd be able to get a picture, but of course by the time I got back outside, it was gone. The mantis I saw was rather small, so I wonder if it was still in the nymph stage.
Mantises have three life stages: egg, nymph and adult. The nymph looks much like the adult, only smaller and without wings or functional genitalia.
Praying mantises are one of the beneficial insects that gardeners are happy to see in their garden. The carnivorous mantis has a voracious appetite, and eats other insects from birth. Garden catalogs or garden centers may offer them for sale, as a biological control for insect pests. Mantises are the only insect predators fast enough to catch mosquitoes and flies. They do eat all kinds of other insects, including those that are beneficial as well as garden pests.
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