I was going to mention this yesterday, but that would have been four cicada posts in a row.
I have found that the cicadas sleep pretty hard from eight at night to eight in the morning, so any weeding and planting and parking lot sprints have to happen in that window.
Even so, I find I am now beset by sleeping cicadas, and I have to navigate around them. I did not disturb the cicada sleeping in the tree hollow where I placed a small hand mirror. This was because they say crows love to look at themselves.
So I will be curious to see at five tonight if the crows admire themselves in the mirror, or are driven off by the cicadas. I have great hope for the mirror, because scientists say the fact that crows recognize themselves in a mirror is proof they are self-aware. And I know they love mirrored things; the only jewelry findings they will reliably take are the mirrored balls, and I don’t want them to think those balls give them an accurate representation of how they look.
Finally, for the past 11 months, people in drought-plagued Utah have been beset by Mormon crickets. I haven’t heard them complaining, though it looks as bad as Midwest cicadas.