Grasshopper

We went up to the allotment and spent an hour or two picking stuff and generally tidying up. I met this charming grasshopper who kindly posed on some of the white membrane for me. A mottled grasshopper, Mymeleotettix maculatus , or so I'm told by the man holding a copy of Complete British Insects. And a lady grasshopper, at that, due to her antennae being un-clubbed!

We came back past the Mela site, but before things had really got going there. And we didn't make it out of the house again - grey skies and a very unsettling gusty wind meant that we wimped out.

The ant and the grasshopper, everyone knows how the story goes,
How the ant was diligent, never spent
Anything lightly, laboured wisely,
And gathered his store for tomorrow.

As for the grasshopper, clad in the summer sunshine,
Light as the wind on the broken water,
Her song she gave to the summer days,
Singing "Where the dance leads I'll follow".

From Leon Rosselson's The Ant and the Grasshopper. A great song, which I must get around to learning one of these days...