December 5: Renovation

Bathroom renovation
The spiders have all moved
to different corners.

March 25: Old habits

How strange that I'm happy

the spider's come back

to its bathroom corner.

Posted with Blogsy

February 10: Itsy-bitsy spider

Strangely saddened by

the loss of the spider

above our shower.

Posted with Blogsy

September 1: September begins...

The air feels like September: crisp at night, brilliant blue sky during the day. The bay's a deeper blue than the sky. I had lunch on an outside patio today overlooking the ocean, feeling fortunate to have such beauty (almost) in my back yard.

A fat goldfinch fledgling hung out gorging in our window feeder, even after I pulled the car into the driveway next to it.

Around the corner tucked in between the house and the propane tank, with dead leaves stuck to its web, sits a giant mottled brown-and-white spider. It's both repellent and fascinating. More fascinating than the large spider that wouldn't leave my bathroom sink this morning.

The air already smells of leaf mold. Fern fronds are browned, curled up. Hum of the crickets has a tone that's somewhere between desperate and comforting.

The Strawberry Candy day lily has bloomed again in one last fit of summer flowering.

These in-between days,
that bittersweet edge--blue skies
and one red maple.

September 30: Webs

Monhegan grows some huge spiders. I'm told that most of the monsters I've come across out here are garden spiders, "like Charlotte." That still doesn't prevent me from shivering a little each time I come across one, which is often. In the morning when the dew is on the webs, you can easily see how many spiders have set up shop, their webs strewn among the spruce boughs like scraps of the finest lace. In a barberry bush next to the entrance to one building, four giant spiders with bodies the size and shape of strawberries have woven their webs, one behind the other. Last night when the spiders were on their webs and the strands shone, it gave the little colony an eerie three-dimensional effect. The owner of the inn is fond of one right outside her office window. She says she sometimes watches her (as with falcons, the female is larger than the male)for long periods of time instead of working. I can admire their handicraft and their good work keeping down the fly population, though I don't want to get too close to the creatures themselves. The other night a spider the size of a small rodent crept across the porch. Funny how I wouldn't have been bothered if it had been a mouse, but it being a spider freaked me out.

Complacent spider
oblivious to my fear
mends her perfect web.

August 29: Spider

When the weekend days are steamy like today, the last thing on my "to do" list is anything that resembles a household chore. That includes sweeping up spider webs outside my front door, as much as they creep me out. I know, as a naturalist I shouldn't be bothered by any of nature's wild creatures, but a few things just get me: especially tent caterpillars, earwigs, and big spiders. So when I stepped out the front door this morning and noticed a medium-sized spider perched on a thick tangle of cobweb tucked between the door frame and the porch rail, right under the mailbox, my first inclination was to brush off the web. But as I brought my hand down, the motion scared a much larger spider, which I hadn't seen at first, into the back of the web. The smaller spider turned out to be trapped prey. The big one was in charge. That in itself startled me so much that I left the whole thing intact. And it's still there.

Coming back from a walk into town just now I checked out the web. Smaller, probably paralyzed spider still hangs in the middle of the web. (I can't help but think of Frodo caught by Shelob the spider monster in "Lord of the Rings"). And, well, Shelob herself is still hanging out in a sort of funnel-like cave in her web. The web's in a good spot--lots of flies and other insects are drawn to our porch light. But it's just a little too close to the front doorknob. Some cooler day when I have more energy, the web will have to go. Hopefully Shelob will easily relocate herself to some less obvious spot. And not feel the need to take any kind of revenge on me. 

Sorry, big spider.

You're not trying to frighten.

Webs are what you know.