As at Sea While on Land
I went outside this morning with my journal planning to sit in the garden for a while. Thinking that I might see a ladybug, I brought my camera. The Lost Ladybug Project has been on my mind lately. Perhaps I could get a picture to upload to the project.
Of course when you go looking for one animal, another one shows up instead. This morning it was spiders.
Garden Spider in the dogwood
Right outside the door I looked under the deck for the grey house spider whose web is tucked up against the house where she can hide beneath a shingle. Instead I brushed against a new web that seemed to be suspended in the air, parallel to the back wall of the house. A tiny reddish garden spider clung to the center which was undulating in the morning breeze.
Leaving it be, I went to the back corner of the yard which involves ducking beneath the maple and serviceberry and then brushing aside the long-reaching branches of red-twig dogwood. The scent of sage was overwhelming. A giant salvia, planted to provide hummingbird nectar summer to late fall, has reached its full size.
Honeybees were making regular pit stops on the purple blooms. I tried to take a picture but the breeze was too strong, keeping the stalks in constant motion. Stepping out of the branches, I discovered that I had picked up a rider. A dark round spider with legs three times the size of its body was clinging to the bottom edge of my t-shirt. I tipped it off into the shrub where it settled safely on a lightly bouncing leaf.
Going back to my table at the other side of the dogwood to make some notes I discovered another tiny garden spider. Its web was spread in the partial shade between several dogwood branches and one of the myrtle.
I haven’t had any more luck taking pictures of spider than I have with bees but I took a few shots anyway. Trying to take pictures of insects has led me to two discoveries. The first is that the viewer on a digital camera is useless for judging the quality of pictures when the focus is on something no bigger than a centimeter or so. Second, even on days I consider still, the leaves and branches of plants are really in perpetual motion.
My attempts to take pictures of bees, spiders and butterflies mostly yield a focused image of one leaf or section of branch surrounded by a blur of green with possibly an unidentifiable fuzzy dark spot. Like a man at sea, even when they themselves are still, spiders and insects are almost always moving. Currents generated by whatever breeze there is, abetted by the the passing of creatures large and small, keep the flowers and leaves they visit or attach their webs to in perpetual motion.
Later inside I was pleased to find that I had managed to capture the garden spider, legs unfurled and ready to run along the web. Since its web is on the north side of the shrub, protected from all but the strongest winds, it must have been my movement that sent the web vibrating enough to cause alarm. Was it anticipating a meal or ready to flee if I came any closer?
