Helping out in the garden

Hi, it's Celia again.

When I grow up I'm not going to have flower beds. They are a lot of work, and you don't really get anything out of them, like food. My mom has big flower beds in the front of the house. She was pruning the dead mums by breaking off the stalks with her hands. I watched her for a little while and then told her I knew a faster way. She said I should show her. So I reached down, grabbed a mum, and yanked. This is what happened:

Yep, out it came. Roots and all.

Mom said, "You're right. That is faster. Now if you are going to help, do it the right way."

So I started breaking off the dead parts and saw this:

I freaked out. Mom said, "What is it?"
"Some big globby thing."
Mom looked. "No, that's an egg sac from a praying mantis."
"You mean a bug is going to come out of that?!!"
"No, not a bug. Hundreds of bugs. And they are good for the garden. They eat aphids, and aphids harm the plants by blah, blah, blah..."
Sigh. Mom knows a lot of useless interesting stuff. And she likes to tell me it. I suspect she secretly counts it as school. I started thinking about ponies, and how nice it would be to own one. But then she said, "And do you know that some ants keep aphids as pets?" Now that WAS interesting. We decided to keep the egg sac, and put it in a bush.

And here's a picture of the garden after the mums were pruned.