Just as we were falling asleep on Friday night around midnight, Trevor stirred and mumbled something about grasshoppers.
We’ve just planted out a whole new batch of seedlings (cabbage, broccoli, artichokes and broadbeans) and have covered over each with a plastic drinks container as a way of keeping the grasshoppers at bay. During the day the grasshoppers somehow seem to do minimal damage, but its night time when they are at their worst. munching everything in sight (but not the buffel grass!!!) So we have a bottle off during the day and bottles back on at night routine.
When we got back from holidays last week our blood orange tree was completely stripped, and our other citrus had suffered significant damage from the vast array of grasshoppers at night. The kale has been stripped as well and other plants are under severe attack. And the buggers have the arrogance to sing grasshopper love songs outside our bedroom window at night just to rub in our faces that there is going to be a new wave of the little buggers in the spring.
So the plastic bottles are our defence line for the new seedlings. But at the end of a long week we had just tumbled into bed and forgotten to put the bottles back on. Hence Trevor’s stirrings and getting up with me staying in bed dozing awaiting his return.
Half an hour later still no Trevor. There’s something round midnight that makes you fear the worst. I made it to the seedling bed looking for the flash of light from Trevor’s headlamp. Nothing. I called out. Nothing. It was a moonless night so getting a torch from the house I hurried back to the seedling beds sweeping the torch over the ground expecting to see a prone Trevor, his headlamp downwards into the earth perhaps overtaken by a swarm of grasshoppers attacking his eyes and ears and nose. Nothing. Had he been spirited away by one of the spirits that abound where we live? Was he having a chat to a neighbour?
A sweep of the front yard, a flash of light. Trevor is there catching the buggers still having a go at the citrus. He’s got a drink bottle container half full of grasshoppers dazzled by the light and now captive. He can’t understand the fuss I make about where he has been – its kind of normal here to be at midnight plucking grasshoppers off plants, and placing bottles full of them into the fridge to feed to the chickens in the morning.
In the morning I push past the bottles to get to the yoghurt – the grasshoppers are soporific with the cold and barely twitch an antenna as the bottles get jiggled around. I have no sympathy being cranky with interrupted sleep.
For those of you who recognise the jazz reference (even though the title used on this clip is a little out of whack):
And another jazz favourite:
