Trying to Hold Onto the Bloom

It was the opening day for the artists' booths at our local Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, and I had taken the afternoon off. I had just had a nice lunch with old friends, and I planned to head to the middle of campus and then downtown to visit the booths and listen to some live music.

I didn't know it yet, but on this afternoon, with an initial forecast of zero percent chance of rain, our festivities would be interrupted by a powerful storm with lightning and downpours that would strand me under the Old Main porch for a half-hour with two dozen fest-goers like myself, and children who doffed their shoes and danced in the rain.

But first, I stopped by the Arboretum to check things out. I was taking some macro echinacea shots, when I heard a sound and saw a tiny movement on a nearby flower. The yellow flower was the last of its kind; all of the others had already dissolved into piles of saffron petals on the ground.

When I detected the motion of the flower, I wondered if perhaps a bug had landed on it. Upon looking closer, I found this cute green fellow, who resembles (to me) a Crittergator wanna-be!

I believe it is a juvenile grasshopper, and I took several photos of it. In this particular shot, it has its front legs extended, and it appears that it is trying very hard to hold onto, or perhaps protect, the very last yellow bloom. ("This is my flower; you no can has!")

The bug, well, *cue music* I guess he (or she!) is just mad about saffron . . .

The song: Donovan, Mellow Yellow.