The wild-born grasshoppers I’ve come to love and accept in my garden are getting their adult colors:

BEAUTIFUL multicolored adults are now the size of my index finger. I’ve known them since they were the size of my pinky-nail and thought they’re juvenile coloration was also striking. They were all black but varied in either having bright red or bright yellow pin-striping:

Here they are as babies, seen eating my vegetation! Beautifully colored & quite cute…. But we needed to fix our shared-garden situation. They needed a place to live and something to feed on that wasn’t my planted flowers and veggies.

The babies were more gregarious and socially curios. Roughly half the colony has moved in or otherwise disappeared as the fewer and now larger now adults settle in for seemingly lifelong existence. The now adults are predominately and wisely cautious around me however I’m lucky to call 3 of them “good friends,” and enjoy feeding those by hand. See below as I feed one a slice of peach fruit.

They love canned fruit, namely peaches. I don’t like canned fruit n so I’m giving them my canned fruit to keep them from eating my garden of veggies n flowers.

They now fertilize my garden vs decimate it. I’d next like to pursue a natural diet to both enhances the quality of their health as well as the quality of manure-fertilizer they add to my garden.