Grasshopper Surprise

This is my entry for the daily photo color challenge. I took this picture while hiking in the Cleveland National Forest last weekend. (Check out my previous post about our hike to Eagle Rock!) When I snapped this shot I thought I was just taking a picture of a pretty flower, but it ended up being a two for one.

After the hike, and after getting cleaned up and making dinner, I started going through all of my pictures. I almost passed over this one thinking it was just like all the other flower pictures I took. However, when I cropped it and zoomed in to admire the clarity and detail, I saw a tiny grasshopper resting on one of the petals. It was quite a nice surprise. I don't know much about the lives of grasshoppers, but I know their song very well. One of the houses I grew up in was surrounded by woods, and when you stepped outside in the evening all you could hear was the grasshoppers singing.

On the Grasshopper and Cricket
By John Keats

The Poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.