Tag: gardening

Lady Spider: the flip side

11 Comments

This morning I ventured out while the air was cool.  The heat and humidity have been so oppressive that it was a shock to open the door and feel a delicious breeze to greet me.

I set to work pulling grass and other weeds to throw over to Polly and the gang.  They come running, honking thanks, to chow down.  Though they carefully remove the spurge.  (I think they don’t like its milky sap.)

I worked my way down the row of tomatoes and there she was!  My Lady Spider from last week’s post… Posing in perfect lighting!  I ran for my camera, and quickly washing the grime from my hands, I dried, then ran back out again.

I caught her.

Is a leftover leg from your previous meal as embarrassing as having spinach in your teeth on a date?

Then as I watched a rather large insect flew by and was caught in her web.  Faster than I could respond, she was there, but I was able to get a few shots of what transpired next!

Quickly she began to twirl the insect with her legs, all the while coating it with a jet of silk shot from her spinnerets.

Now as I watched she stopped for a moment and…

inflicted her victim with a venomous bite.

I continued watching as she cut her prey loose and in a flash ran back to the center of her web…

where she will dine at her leisure.

End note:

Spiders, lacking teeth, must dine on a liquid diet.  Using specialized mouth parts called chelicerae they inject poison into their victims.  The poison paralyzes their meal, but does not kill.

The world of spiders may chill you gentle reader, but without them we would be awash in insect pests of all sorts and descriptions!  I find their world fascinating, yet repulsive.   However, the thought of the alternative finds me giving the ladies my blessings to hunt the gardens here.

BECAUSE YOU ASKED:

The center zigzag pattern of the orb weaver‘s web is called the stabilimentum, and although it has been named, it is up in the air as to the function it serves.  Some say camouflage for the spider, others say to keep birds from flying through it (or unwary gardeners walking into it!) Still others claim it attracts insects into the web.  Whatever its use to the spider it is surely of varied and interesting construction!  Please do follow the link, via a click on the word above, to see some of these variations.  For those of a more scientific mind, please look on the web page Psyche A Journal of Entomology which can be found here:  http://psyche.entclub.org/87/87-013.html

Photo Friday: follow me!

16 Comments

You’ve been here many times before, but I had so much fun discovering what’s been happening behind the scenes that I just had to share with you dear reader.

First, thing you’ll notice is that my sunflowers are now about 12 feet tall! Walking in the garden with these behemoths towering overhead makes me feel like a child again…

But now I turn your attention to looking closer, underneath the leaves here, where you will find squash blossoms and immature fruits awaiting pollination. 

What’s that you say?

You spy bugs in the blossoms?

Not to worry.  Keep up with me now.

Here’s a surprise!  Naked Ladies bounding up from the ground where I was sure they would be never seen again!   You see there was in incident with that rototiller earlier in the season…  Yet there were survivors and…

What?

Oh, yes I saw it too, another little bug in the flower, and it’s eating the pollen you say?  Don’t worry, just follow me…

 Having never grown cotton before I was enchanted with how the flower buds reminded me of ceremonial Thai hats.

We had a couple of 2 X 4 Tarter tank water troughs hanging about, left over from brooding chicks and geese.  So we moved one into the garden and attached a lovely faucet handle (brought all the way from the house in California) into the drain hole.  Now I fill it from the well and it gently soaks the garden on days with no rain.  I think it looks lovely and it is definitely practical don’t you agree?

I thought these were stunning so I captured them for you too...

 I’ve entitled it: 

A Mother’s Adoration

So as you have noticed I have bugs.  I chose not to spray and that’s what you get when you don’t use chemicals.  Lots of bugs!  Instead I planted flowers in the midst of the garden and that, my friends, brought in more bugs.

the reinforcements!

So, allow me to introduce you to my equalizers…

The Fairy Lacewing

A Dragonfly

(He must have flown in from my last post! 😉 )

Looking closely we see evidence that parasitic wasps have taken up residence amongst the tomatoes…  I know it offends your sensibilities, and for that I am sorry, but it is a bug eat bug world out there and without the beneficials we would go wanting!

And now finally…

SPIDER ALERT!

OK, you’ve been officially warned.

(Please do click on her for a closer look, and if you can stand it, click on her again to really see her in detail.)

I found this beautiful lady!  She’s one and one half inches long (including legs)!  Do you see her suitor in the background?

For those bugs who would seek to destroy my garden by their sheer numbers, Japanese beetles and squash bugs, well there is the bucket of water for them…  I gather them up every morning and take them over to my chickens and the WeeChoo.  The chickens make short work of the Japanese beetles, and My guinea hen “WeeChoo” eats the squash/stink bugs!

Yes, my garden is full of insects.  Some of my plants have holes in the leaves and I lose a few to the bad guys now and again.  However, as time goes by the good should outweigh the bad.

In the end, I have the confidence of knowing that I can eat what I grow without fear.   It also makes me glad that I have not added anything to the environment that would do harm.

It is a great feeling.

In [the garden] no one can hear you screem…

8 Comments

Jeez!  Sometimes I really scare myself.  This morning I was out cutting off the spent lavender spikes with my favorite trusty Corona pruning shears… and got my finger in just for good measure… Now I am not one to shout out with OMG lightly, but standing there looking at the damage I’m certain I uttered the popular outcry more than once, and I meant it too!

It was a 1 inch cut, not deep enough for stitches, so the Dr. used some surgical ‘Super Glue’ to put it back together again and now it is as good as new.

Well, sort of.

Weirdly, it never hurt, not once, and on the end of my finger it should have hurt like h…      er,   A LOT!

Well, at least something good came out of it.  I’m off dish duty for the week!

On second thought, maybe I’ll pick up some dishwashing gloves at the market tomorrow…

 

Photo Credit:  Click on the picture to take you to the origin of today’s borrowed photograph and human interest article from 2009.  🙂

Photo Friday: garden spider surprise

13 Comments

This week in the garden I found a Wolf Spider with her egg sack in tow…

The white round thing is the egg sack, but even so, she herself (legs included) was the size of a silver dollar.  The bright silver bits in the lower right are the tines on my pitchfork.  I left them in for size comparison.

Can’t see her?  Oh, OK!

For a really close up view you can click the image and get as close as you like…

How’s that?

Personally, with the exception of Brown Recluse, I don’t mind spiders in my garden.  They perform a beneficial service for me by ridding my plants of bad insects.  She is obviously well fed living here in the compost pile.  From the looks of her egg case, her babies will be hatching soon!  Which means more hungry spiders to eat all those nasty flying Palmetto bugs hiding in there!

I have been partial to Wolf spiders since I was seven.  Back then I was brave enough to touch that gigantic fluffy looking spider in the barn…  Whereupon all her ‘fuzzy’ sprouted legs and went scurrying off her back!  Lady Wolfspider will carry all her babies on her back for a while after hatching thus making herself look even more enormous as well as affording her progeny a bit of extra protection!