Garden Messages

  After a daily rain for the past few months, we are now with a lack of rain. Not to mention...it is HOT!  So hot, in fact, that the garden is taking a beating.  Yesterday, things looked pretty bad so I dragged out the sprinkler.  After a good soaking, my plants looked much better and the garden was refreshed.  This morning, I wandered outside to pick a few tomatoes when something caught my eye.  The watering had brought the critters out and into action!  There were writings in the garden!  Perhaps this was a "thank you" for the cooling mist!

  Actually, a spider had made its web across some of the chives.  The inner part of the web was a thick thatching of webbing that resembled handwriting, albeit poor handwriting.  This spider is what we always called a banana spider.  I have no clue where the name came from but I do know that they can get quite large and make huge webs that can span between trees.  I have not seen one in years!  When we were younger, my brothers and I used to catch these spiders and keep them in old mason jars for a day.  We would feed them insects that we caught and poked down into the jars.  Mom and Pop had no qualms about our play but by the end of the day, we had better let the critter go free.  We were told to return them to the place where they were found.

  Some folks called the critters "writing spiders" after their habit of decorating the inner portion of their web with thicker silk. This writing attracts bugs to visit and inadvertently "stay" for supper.  Now, I am no spider expert but supposedly this is a male spider.  The slender abdomen of my garden writer seems to indicate it is not a female as they are much larger!  I will leave this guy as he could prove useful.  His beautiful webbing may just catch that horrid squash bug that has been terrorizing the stalks of my yellow summer squash.