My life is ruled by these insects 🐛pruning cucumbers & more

Published: Sun, 06/22/25

Updated: Wed, 06/25/25

The Summer of Cicadas

My life is cicadas these days. It’s funny. I know they’re a temporary frustration to endure. Really, who can complain about an insect that makes its appearance once every seventeen years, is only around for a month or so, and then disappears for another seventeen years. They don’t even bite.

But they’ve been a daily presence since the end of April when the boys and I started digging up the overgrown viburnum in the side yard.

We found their nymphs in the soil we were digging in. There were hundreds! And that was just one flower bed. We were shocked at the number of them. I knew this spring it was going to be a noisy summer.

Then they began to hatch.

Exoskeletons are littering every nook and cranny of my yard. Seeing them in full force above ground was amazing.

They’re terrible flyers. They’re all drunk, the way they bumble around until they run into something. Whether that something is a tree, a shrub or me, they don’t seem to mind.

They’re everywhere, as I live right in the thick of this particular hatch.

And while their presence is mildly annoying, they do sound nice. Each day, when they get going, they’re an audible chorus of summer. Some days, they are deafening.

I have to remind myself that within a few weeks, their cacophony will fall silent. Seventeen years underground, for a few weeks above it. What a strange and wonderful world we live in.

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That's all for this week, Rural Sprout Readers.

Sincerely,

Tracey Besemer

Editor in Chief

Rural Sprout

Owner

Almost a Homesteader

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