My gardens are teaming with woolly bears. I've seen more of the little guys in the matter of a few days than I've seen in several years. It's a little crazy.
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| hello friend. |
This afternoon and the other day, every other time I scratched into the soil or scuffled the day lilies, I would unintentionally reveal a woolly bear or two. A few curled up in self-defense, but the others took off at an impressive clip. I didn't realize they were so quick!
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| and another. |
I kind of adore them - the woolly bear was my fall "council of beings" being (it's a grad-school thing). I need to dig out the poem I wrote - I'll add it here when I unearth my journal from storage.
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| on the move, although it quickly turned back down and scurried away. |
I remember when I was younger that we would catch them and keeping them in a mason jar with some grass and a stick, and holes punched in the lid for a few days before releasing them back out into the wild. We used to go on the old wives' tale that the banding on the woolly bear will help predict winter; the wider the middle band, the longer/harsher the winter. Not sure that's the case, but it's nice to pretend.
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| long winter ahead? |
Oh, and there's this guy, too. He was a handful. Literally, he filled my entire hand. He fled the garden as I was mowing, and I built him a toad house against the house, behind the honeysuckle, but he didn't stick around. I'm sure he's still around- maybe there's a Toad Hall somewhere that I haven't found yet.
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“I'm such a clever Toad.”
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows |
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