If you don’t train them well, they might strike out to find their own way in the world, and then who knows where they might end up!

Some will be ready in about a week.

If you grow these, I need to remind again about the nectaries at each grouping attracting wasps and yellow jackets.  Even after the flowers are gone.  Actually even after the beans are  gone! There is one wooden fence post in the fenced area that had a lot of black eyes all over it last year.  This spring, ever since yellow jackets hatched and came out, there were yellow jackets walking and sitting on that post a lot, when the black eye plants were only 2″ tall.  Some of the smell of the nectar must have lasted all thru the winter in the grain of the wood. Watch out when you go to pick the pods. They don’t have a real good disposition, and they hurt something awful when they sting.

I had a visitor you don’t often get to see in the garden this morning. He wasn’t out there long; gone when I went out in just a while to check again. There may be readers who don’t have these in their part of the world.  It’s a cicada, also called a locust here.  Some cultures call grasshoppers locusts; it all depends on where you grew up, like lots of other things do. He was about 2″ long, counting wings.

I think he had just split out of his shell not long before I saw him, cos they don’t ordinarily sit out in the open long, since there are some birds that will eat them.  They usually only let themselves be exposed like this right after the hard experience of breaking out of their shells.  They come up from the ground and the shell is soft and quickly begins to harden once the air hits it, so they have to be quick about getting the back of the shell split open and get out.

Later when I go out I’ll hear one singing and wonder if it was this one……….I seldom walk in the garden now without taking my phone so I have the camera.  I’m glad I had it this time!