I love living in the woods….
Busy as bees all weekend. There’s the zines to get out and Ern (the senior partner in the zines) had his birthday party at our house. So, with 16 people coming for a BBQ dinner, Hyperion and I really had to clean the house and the yard. Ern came out a couple of times to help with the yard work. Remember the tree that fell over. Well, it really needed the brush cut and then the limbs that we could cut with our chainsaw cut and stacked or piled to be split later. The guys made a great start on it I’ll try to post a picture tomorrow to add to this post.
The party went off smoothly. I believe everyone, including the birthday guy, had a great time. Only 12 of us but it was a congenial group and the company and conversation was varied, interesting, and far ranging with subjects from maps, the Civil War (or war of Northern Aggression), genealogy, science, technology, peak oil, wind generation, fusion reactors, dirigibles, books, movies, poetry, and family stories. It was an amazing evening.
To top it off, a big spider was on the deck and had spun a web from the humming bird feeder stand to the deck rail to a plant stake. It had just finished the spokes of the web and the inner most circle when we noticed it. We sort of stood around in a group watching the spider build this amazingly fragile web. I’d never seen a spider build one before and thought it would take a lot longer. In just a few minutes the circles extended out to the edges. Then she began to add more spokes. We gave up watching but after seeing people off, Hyperion and I stopped to check and see if we could photograph it in the dark (no luck, even with a flash). But the web was finished and had already captured at least three victims.
I’m truly fascinated by nature and its creatures. I’d never seen a web built from beginning to end and the first capture of food for the builder. She obviously chose her spot well. I’m hoping in the morning to again try to get a photo — hoping for better luck in daylight.