My Garden and Two Spiders

A couple of things about spiders ....

I'm an arachnophobe. It took decades for me to be able to be around them whilst remaining somewhat rational. I was even afraid of killing them. I'm generally averse to killing things just because I don't like them or because I'm afraid of them, but I was also so physically revolted and terrified of them that their deaths and dead bodies were just as bad as the living things.

Years later, through education and working on being around them and observing, I'm now able to garden with them. It's not easy. They have to be 'my' spiders, the spiders that live outside in my garden and who generally leave me alone and if they happened to hitch a ride on me by accident, they're as eager to get away from me as I am to have them off of me.

I want to mention a couple in particular today.

The first is the so-called common garden spider, which I've found to be somewhat uncommon in my area.

I love these spiders. They're huge, which makes them somewhat easy to spot (so I can keep my distance) and they tend to make their webs in or around very tall grass, at least in my garden, so they've never once (so far) stretched their webs across one of my paths and nailed me in the face.

They're also artists. They weave something down the middle of their orb web to look like something an insect might want to land on, or that at least blends in a bit with the wheat and other grasses they prefer.

The other kind, although I garden with them side-by-side all the time (not by choice, they're extremely profuse) I'm not so fond of. They lurk on pale flowers and kill bees. Now, if it was a bee here and a bee there, I wouldn't mind so much. But these are first-rate bee killers, and they don't seem to have an off switch. I've seen one kill a bee when it had several dead ones already, and I can't imagine a spider that size needing that much food. But, what do I know? Maybe they lay a single egg on each one or something like that. I call them white crab spiders, but I'm not sure what they're really called. This time of year most of the ones I found were tiny. In spring, when I have my first flush of rose blossoms, they're all over the white roses, and the cream and apricot ones, and they also lurk near the pale pollen on my giant tree peonies.

I won't go on an active campaign to destroy them all, but I also don't care for them and given half of an excuse to mush one, I will. I also snip flowers that are the least bit faded that have them on them and put them in the compost. I'm sure that doesn't do much to them, but maybe, on their way to find a new pale flower, they'll be eaten by the heaps of jumping spiders and other hunting-style spiders that roam through the grass.

Happy gardening!

Kevin the Spider

My DH is home, gammon is on, and life is good.

Like a lot of writers we know, our good life is, well, a little ... different.

I'm a long-time arachnophobe. Had to train myself out of completely freaking out, as in jumping around squealing, just so I could walk through the woods to the bus stop in the mornings. You see, orb weaver spiders, especially the ones that reach that nice, big, mature size, need a lot of room to make their webs, and besides, how else can you capture humans in order to suck their brains out through their eyeballs and lay eggs in their ears unless you build a web all the way across a people path?

I had an orb weaver in my kitchen window for a while. I called her Michele, a coworker terrified of spiders. Sadly, Michele, after getting really, really huge, got very weak one day and fell into the sink. Rather than let her stagger around in there, knowing she probably couldn't cling to her web anymore, I let her go outside, figuring she was done for. They only live a year, and she was long past that. I was sad. Me! An arachnophobe! But she never wandered from the window (except that one, sad, last time) to suck my brains out through my eyeball and never laid eggs in my ear, and for that reason, I was fond of her.

I had great plans to clean the window, but then Kevin moved in, named for a coworker who also doesn't like spiders. Kevin built one of those cobwebby-webs right under Michele's old, now tattered home. Kevin got big, and then I realized Kevin was probably a girl. Kevin vanished for a while, and then I found Kevin outside ... and figured out it was actually probably Kevina and she'd slipped through the window crack and couldn't get back in.

Now I have another Kevin, who appeared to have moved into Kevina's web. I knew it was a different spider, because he was smaller. Emphasis on the was. Once again, I'm fond of the fact that every day I go into the kitchen and Kevin is nicely staying put, eating flies that normally would bounce off the kitchen window and walk all over my nice food while I'm cooking. Now Kevin is even bigger than Kevina was. I mist his (better be a boy and not lay eggs!!) web every morning to make sure he doesn't get dehydrated.

Here he is:

I'll get a better picture of him later. He comes out quite often to bask in the sunshine and gloat over the corpses of his enemies.

I never thought to have a pet spider. Actually, I don't think that Kevin is so much a pet as he is a neighbor. He's a very good neighbor. Unlike that OMG creepy thing that descended from the ceiling right next to my DH while we were starting to get frisky ... talk about killing a mood!

I knew, just knew that nasty thing would have sucked my brains right out of my eyeball given half a chance. I fled. My DH bravely fought it off and killed it after an epic battle. He's my hero.

Kevin would never do that. Never.

Never.

Spiiiiideeeerss!

I'm an arachnophobe.  I've gotten better over the years through desensitization, but there are some things that still make me freak out.  I don't know why!  I know spiders are small and easily managed.  This doesn't help me.

I know most of them don't have painful bites, but it's not the bite that freaks me out anyway, though I don't consider their bites trivial either.  I don't know if an arachnophobe can adequately describe how a spider's movements send a shudder of alarm through the system, though it's not all that different from the movements of a beetle, a bug I'll willingly (and in the case of a ladybug, eagerly) pick up.  The sizes and textures that spiders come in, again, aren't that radically different from many insects.  There are lots of hairy, spikey, long and short legged insects of various dispositions that have spider-like qualities.  It's not the webs per se either.  I have a fascination for webs.  Yeah, they're unpleasant to get across the face (bleh!!!!!) but they're not radically different from tent caterpillars or spider mites or any number of silk-producing critters.  In fact, in a side-by-side comparison, tent caterpillar nests are weirder, nastier, dirtier, and more extensive in most cases.  But what freaks me out?  The spider web.  The spider crawling on the wall (or on me!)  Teh yarg factor when it comes to spiders has no comparison in Kami's little world of fears.

Last night, little baby spiders hatched.  I think more than one nest has hatched at the same time, because we have them both in the kitchen and in my office.  Normally I get all weird about killing spiders.  There's something just as unpleasant, if not more unpleasant, about killing them or having them killed as there is having them running around in my space.  Whereas a squished fly fills me with satisfaction, a squished spider sends shudders of horror through my system.  I know this makes no sense!  

Anyway, I'll make an exception for massive spider slaughter when it comes to baby spiders.  There's nothing for it but vacuuming.  Because they get everywhere.  They drip from the ceiling, and make little spider highways that dangle and loop and bridge from light fixtures to corner nooks and across doorways.  At least with baby spiders, my arachnophobia doesn't go into full heebie jeebie panic dance mode.  Even my twisted, pitifully insecure, irrational brain won't respond with a full adrenaline dump to a pale dot drifting through the air.  But I still find it really, really unpleasant, and now I itch all over.

Oh, oh!  Maybe I can make a comparison that non-arachnophobes can relate to.  Lice.  My reaction to spiders is like most people's reaction to lice.  You don't care if they're not on you personally, right?  The horror--and nothing feels clean for a long time, and there's the obsessive laundry washing and bagging of toys and going to the store for shampoos, combs, anything ...  except with spiders, I don't have to poison myself.  They're much easier to get rid of.  My emotional reaction to them, however, is just about the same.  Close enough to get a feel for it.  And just like parents of middle school students that have to deal when the inevitable time comes when the child comes home with a note from the teacher, I have to deal with spiders, especially when I garden.  Unlike lice, however, spiders often just drop right in front of your face with a happy "Surprise!"  And they're everywhere.  All the time.

Some spiders are just so cool, I can appreciate them.  Preferably at a distance.  Tarantulas are one group I can tolerate pretty well.  And the common yellow and black garden spiders argiope aurantia (which around here are actually uncommon) are full of awesome.  (My local ones tend to be yellow and brown, but they're the same species.)  Maybe because they're polite and remain outside at all times.  Anyway, though I wouldn't be thrilled to have one crawling on my arm, the fact that this is unlikely to happen fills me with admiration and relief.  Most large orb weavers drop to the ground as quickly as possible when their webs are disturbed, and leave us poor humans alone.  Now that's a spider I can like.

Itches and Feedback Dilemma

'Tis the season for spider bites, I guess.  I called the advice nurse and it sounds like I won't have to go in about it unless it starts to get extra icky, or I have red streaks or bright redness or I lose circulation in my foot (?!!)  In the meantime it's an itchy pain in the ankle.  I'm continuously distracted by it.  To keep it from really getting to me during the critique session today I covered it with a pirate-themed bandaid.  

Which, the critique went really well.  I'm not sure which way to go, because the group was pretty sharply divided.  I don't want to leave it alone until I'm done with the book either, because I know me, and me usually doesn't get back to feedback-focused editing unless me does it right away.  I'll sleep on it.  Tonight I plan on shaping up the next submission to the group, the next chapter in the book, and then I'll send it out.  I don't want to procrastinate on these subs. 

 If it weren't for David Levine's timely reminder about the meeting, I would have missed the deadline (I thought I had another week, eek!) and then I would have been in trouble.  Well, sort of.  We all would have had a nice round of drinks at my expense.  This time I'll have it all done in advance, and that'll give everyone more time to read, too.  Winners all around, except the Lucky Lab I guess.

Back to writing now.  I'll leave you with It (short for It Runs In Front of Me) in kitty zen meditation becoming one with the loops.

It's Alive!

There's a lot of things to get used to when you move into a rural or semi-rural area.  No natural gas lines.  No DSL.  Spotty or minimal cellphone coverage.  More frequent brown and blackouts (which makes the woodstove more than a decorative item) that tend to last longer than in town.  Deer eating up your garden, not just occasionally, but every frickin' night.  Dozens of bunnies that you scare off as you walk the garden--but they'll be back in a few minutes.  (I had three small bunnies hop out of one of my herb whiskey barrels not long ago when I watered.)  And ...

SPIIIIIIDERS!  This one here is one of my favorites.  It's a garden spider, literally.  I posted pics a long time ago of the very first one I saw, evah.  Now I have quite a few, though despite the fact they're considered common I sure don't see many of them.  I see far more of the orange and black orb spiders.  One of the many fun things about them is the squiggle they weave into their webs.  Some scientists believe it's supposed to imitate a wheat shaft to help fool insects into flying too close.  No one's really sure.  Notice how she lines up the squiggle with the dark line on her body, and how that line design kinda looks like wheat too... or maybe something else.  Or maybe it's all accidental or still a WIP by evolution.  Anyway, if spiders terrify you, don't live in the country.  You won't be able to go into the garden, nor sleep at night.  Plus, there's never anything to do around here.  All I had to do today beside the normal barn chores was move the sicklebar mower, which was out of gas, from the lower property to the garage.  Ho hum.  (gasp, pant!)

In other garden news, huzzah!  Tomatoes at last!

With the cool weather it's been a long, long wait for ripe tomatoes.  The plants are huge, though.  The leaves are packed together very tightly against the fence they're growing up.  They're as tall as I am.  If the tomatoes didn't turn red, I'd never find them in there.  I also have eggplant developing, but the fruit is still pretty small, about the size of a golf ball.  This variety of eggplant doesn't get more than 3" across and stays pretty round, so we're a bit less than halfway there.  Hopefully we'll have plenty of time before serious cold weather sets in.  We still have rhubarb and currants.  We're waiting on grapes, cucumbers and pears.  Apples are done/fallen (the goats are very happy), blackberries are mostly over with (though there are plenty of green ones, once the rains set in the berries are pretty yucky and mold quickly) if not done, marionberries are done, blueberries sort of never arrived but are sort of done, herbs are in bloom and for the most part sub-optimal unless you're a bee, in which case they're perfect.