Jase rocks

Jason finished up some flashing on the roof, and while he was up there, he plugged up the gutter over our porch. The one that spills buckets of rain water onto the flower bed in front of our house. That means, we could also plant the hibiscus and phlox that we bought today. Yay!

But, the real story is the praying mantis that Jase saw in the bed. She was eating a fly. A fly whose leg was still twitching.

You can't see the fly leg twitching action in these photographs, but if you make them larger (by clicking on them), you can see it's lower body. By the time we saw the scene, the mantis had already eaten the fly's head.

As I was taking photos, it stopped eating and turned to look at me. While looking up praying mantis at Wikipedia, we learned that they are one of the few insects that can turn their heads, and that there are 2,300 mantis species world-wide. We also learned that a praying mantis is capable of capturing and killing a humming bird.

Pretty wild.

Details, details, details

Right begfore we left for holiday, Jase finished up the crown moulding in the living room. The actual moulding has been up, but the caulking and touch-up paint had to be done:



He's pretty good, yes? Oh, and don't mind the slash of paint on the ceiling, which is visible in the photo, as it's not visible in real life.

While he was finishing this project, I was updating one of our other blogs, and we were listening to This American Life. A perfect no-work afternoon :)