Finally, an egg sac to call my own!

Finally my hopes and dreams of having a mantis farm have been realized. No longer will I have to wait in line at the garden store with everybody else to get my own praying mantis larva. Thanks to Jasmine, I have an egg sac of my very own just waiting to hatch next May on one of my citrus trees! I haven't seen her in a while but I like to think she left behind her legacy in the form of 500 little mantis eggs.

Speaking of things that leave eggs sacs in their wake, I've definitely grown in terms of my relationship with 8-legged beasties. Thanks to all of them peacefully living in my garden, I've completely conquered my fear of spiders. Even if they're on me. (Sadly, the same cannot be said for Bess Bess. When she was here last, she moved a bag of potting soil for me, and came away with a fat black passenger clinging to the leg of her capris. My ears are still ringing.) The other night, I had that stupid stress dream where I'm in a room full of spider webs, all occupied, of course. In the dream, I have to get out, but of course there's no clear path, no matter how much I crawl and contort. So how do I know I'm officially not afraid of them anymore?  In the dream, I looked at all those plump beasties, then shrugged, and said, "Eh, they're not that big." Then I just walked out. Now I'm not the type that believes you can consciously control dreams (if I could, you better believe 80s MacGyver would have saved me), so dream Andie gets all the credit for that one. I bet I never have that nightmare again.