Today, we invite you into our garden (literally) to pause and reflect on nature. Here we see an insect known, in English, as the praying mantis. It is called a PRAYING mantis because when it holds it’s two front legs together, it looks like it is praying. The scientific name Mantodea  and common name, MANTIS, come from the Greek word for prophet. As for why it is called a prophet, we do not know. 

What do you think of when you see these insects. Praying prophets? Do you see the beauty of nature and the world around you?  Do you see a tidy little bug that does no harm to your garden, yet devours bugs that are harmful to the garden? If you are a little cricket, stuck in the grasping, spiked forelegs, you might call this insect a PREYING mantis. Does you perspective change learning that the closest living relative of the mantis is a cockroach?  Like poets and writers have been saying since the Greeks in the 3rd century, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What beauty can you find today in your world?