Opportunistic

The lawn gets mowed every other week. I probably could have mowed it last week, but I did other things.

I still don't know where I'm going to, ultimately, put the recycling, garbage, and yard waste cans. To mow the lawn, I moved the garbage can up by the AC unit, to get it out of the way.

Forty-five minutes later, when I finish mowing the lawn, I see this.

I mean, 45 minutes is all it took for this spider to spin a web between the deck and the garbage can. I am impressed. I was going to move the can away from the AC but decided to just leave it after seeing this. The web was gone in 3 days and I've since moved the can, but the ingenuousness of spiders is quite astonishing.

Beverage:  English Breakfast Tea

Deb

Traveling

Recently, my mom and sister, Sharyn, went to visit Carole and Larry in Virginia. I drove to Iowa the first weekend in May and picked up mom. She stayed at the house for a day while I worked and that evening, we drove into Chicago, in a driving, pouring, beastly rain, to pick Sharyn up at the Greyhound station.

Ironically, I had inspected that station, twice, for a very large road construction project currently going on a couple blocks away. The rain had stopped by the time Sharyn arrived so the drive home wasn't quite so sloppy.

We got up at 4 am the next morning, to pack up the car and head to O'Hare. They had an 8:30 am flight to Richmond, Virginia.

This is a really big deal. Mom hates flying. Once you get her in the air, it's not so bad and I'm told she even looked out the window once or twice. But she has issues with the pressure encountered when you take off and land. She said landing at O'Hare on the way back was horrible. Her face hurt so much she almost cried. The week spent with Carole and Larry was worth it, however.

While out there, Sharyn saw these.

This is an orb spider. They only come out at night. They were all over Carole and Larry's front porch and across the front of the garage. There was some "freaking out" when Sharyn pointed them out and a request to "Kill them! Kill them all!" Sharyn will have none of that nonsense. She knows, as I do, spiders are extremely beneficial. If you don't want to be eaten by mosquitos or have your deck plants chewed on by nasty bugs, you need to keep spiders around. Of course, they don't need to be in the house. We both try to gather the arachnoid onto something and fling it into the yard, where it belongs. Sharyn said the orb spiders in Michigan aren't as pretty as these. A friend said she'd be more afraid of the shadowy thing in the background than the spider. The angle of the light on the spider does make for an interesting shadow.

They are home now. I drove Sharyn to the bus stop and mom to Iowa. Pilchard and Mija weren't happy there were others in their house, but we all survived, including, I might add, the spiders on Carole and Larry's front porch.

Beverage:  Cream soda

Deb

Move Along

I needed to move the plants on the deck out of the way in order to get the washer in the back door and down the basement stairs. It was also time to deadhead and then cut flowers back. I admit to benign neglect this June simply because I didn't have to water. Had we not had a record rainfall, I would have spent more time moving things around and pruning.

I started in and noticed there was a guest in the corner around the nicotania.

Just above left center is a spider. She had made a lovely circular web in the northwest corner of the deck. As of July 4th weekend, there was only one bundle in that web so I'm not sure if she was having much success with her hunting strategy.

I don't know how long she'd been there. Again, I really hadn't paid that much attention to my deck flowers.

I also felt a bit bad for her because her web wasn't in the best of places. So, I gently removed the part attached to the right and she scuttled off the other side to the deck. I finished pruning and spreading out the flower pots.

There are friends who have an extreme fear of spiders. A couple weeks ago, one of my friends had to stop in the middle of the street to her house and get out of her car because she saw a spider walking across the dashboard. She said she jumped out screaming. I admit to being startled when one has shown up on the steering wheel, having descended from the roof of the Jeep. I don't scream. It's more a gasp because the spider is some place I'm not expecting it to be.

They are so beneficial to life and our environment. I usually, if I can, scoop them up onto paper and toss them outside. In spite of getting some flies and moths in the house, my interior environment is not the best place to catch a meal. They will have better luck stretching a web across the myriad of plants in the yard.

Back in June, I was going to close the window in the office because rain was predicted and found this.

It was this blob of yellow, wrapped in webbing. I poked at it and, when ruptured, all these spheres spilled out. Not real sure, at the time, what they were, I collected them on a piece of paper and tossed them outside before closing the window.

The more I thought about it, the more I wonder if this was a spider nest. I don't know for sure, but the webbing seems to tend toward that notion. It seems weird that it was in the middle of the bottom of the window frame, just stuck there, and not in a corner where it wouldn't get disturbed. For a few seconds, as I looked at it and took photos, I considered leaving it alone just to see whether anything would hatch, but given its location, I would have bumped it eventually. The spheres were rather hard and made a sound like dumping out a bag of marbles when I knocked them off the frame. I've never seen this before so it was fascinating.

My deck spider hasn't been back. I would ignore her for a time if she did come back. She's not really in my way and I'm not in hers. Yes, remove those bottle flies, mosquitos and June bugs from the environment. I applaud you for that. Just don't bring the web inside where it's in my way and don't drop off the ceiling into my vision when I least expect it.

Beverage:  Coca-Cola

Deb

Things I See-November Edition

Here's another collection of things I saw worthy enough for a photograph.

I visited Carole at the end of October. On the way back, I needed a restroom and some tea. Dunkin' Donuts is my go-to place for tea, except, maybe, in western Pennsylvania.

I couldn't toss this even after I'd finished the tea because I can recycle the cup in my recycling. So, a Penn State item made its way into my Iowa Hawkeye house. The tea is always good, even if it came in the wrong color cup.

I've always wanted to make a braided rug. I used to have one that my great-great aunt made. She used wool scraps from a variety of sources. It wore really well for awhile and then disintegrated one day as I was, I thought, gently shaking out crumbs and dirt. I have a booklet that tells me how to make these kinds of rugs and it seems easy enough. It's a great way to use up fabric and is a craft that ties us to our ancestors.

What so great about these rugs, seen in a building I was inspecting, is that they are made from plastic bags. I'm not kidding. I saw these and knew, right away, what they were. I've known, for a long time, about places doing this. It's a great fund raiser for groups and a number of homeless shelters will have residents make rugs. If you accumulate a lot of bags and have no place to recycle them, it might be something you'd like to try. Here's a tutorial on the process.

I loved the colors in the stack. I didn't find out if they sold any of these or, because there were a lot of them, and bags, shoved onto this shelf unit, had the bottom dropped out of sale of plastic bag braided rugs.

This is coal.

Seriously. That's coal on the ground. Some of the people I were with had never seen real coal. Who knows how long it's been here. It's not something that's going to decompose quickly.

Seeing it brought back memories of the manual furnace that heated the farm house I grew up in. We used wood and coal. Coal gave off a smell, but burned for a long time and gave off a lot of heat, once you got it lit. Dad would start the fire in the fall with wood and then toss in the coal. We sometimes had to endure a warm house because he didn't want the fire to go out and have to start the process all over again if the warm spell was going to be just a few days. In the morning, the house was often chilly as the fire wound down, and we got dressed for school in the kitchen with the oven door open to remove the chill from the air.

The chimney had to be cleaned periodically because the layers of soot deposited on the inside could catch fire. We had that happen once. I remember sitting on the steps in the unheated back entry because the soot in the chimney caught fire. We were wrapped in blankets to keep warm. Mom and dad were dousing the red hot coal fire with water in an attempt to create enough steam to put out the chimney fire. Oh the smell and the smoke! Windows and doors were open to create drafts to get the smoke out of the house. I remember having to clean everything for weeks afterward because there was a thin layer of soot everywhere.

It's hard to see, but there is a spider the size of a half-dollar in the upper right corner of this door. Two of my co-workers are very scared of spiders. I would not have a tarantula in my house nor would I stroke one or pick one up or have one crawl across my hand. I'm not, however, terrified of spiders. I usually try to herd them onto the fly swatter or a piece of paper and toss them outside. They do more good out there anyway.

I don't think this gal spun a web in a food-rich environment. This was a courtyard, surrounded by 10 foot tall brick walls and covered with a mesh grating. I'm seeing very tiny spiders in the house now, spiders who were hatched at the middle of fall and who are looking for food before dying off in the winter. They just sort of show up, in the dish drainer, in the corner of windows, in front of books in the bookcase. I just look at them and wonder why they thought where they are was going to yield any sort of meal. Then I squash them.

Speaking of doors,

This was the main entry to a warehouse. The building was built in the 1930's and was reused in the 1980's as a warehouse. Security doors aren't made like this anymore.

A bunch of blocks. I was in a basement and these blocks date from the 1930's. What's so special about these blocks? Well, I don't know much about building construction, particularly older construction. They are interesting on their own and make me curious. What struck me was the Reg. US. Pat. Off. mark. Reguspatoff. I know it stands for "Registered, US Patent Office", meaning the bricks have a patent. It was also the name of a computer in a Saturday morning cartoon.

Someone told me it was in Rocky and Bullwinkle but that was the WAYBACK machine, which was an homage to the UNIVAC from the early age of computing. That age coincided with the germination in Jay Ward's mind, of a subversive cartoon which has just as much relevance to today as it did back in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Find and watch "The Boxtop Robbery" or "Wossamotta U". (The Wossamotta U fight song is directly purloined from the fight song for the Minnesota Golden Gophers. I can't hear their fight song without singing, "Wossamotta, hats off to you. To your colors, ocher and Alice Blue. We shall e're be faithful and true. Hail Wossamotta hail. Better we should be in jail. Hail Wossamotta U.")

Back to Reguspatoff. I'm almost certain it was in Underdog, but I can't find independent confirmation. Since I don't get cable, I can't watch Cartoon Network which might have Underdog on the schedule. Seeing this on these bricks made me snicker. I didn't point this out to my companions as I was pretty sure none of them had the same frame of reference I did.

Finally, I saw this in the basement of a building.

Did you ride face first or feet first? I could never get up the courage to ride face first. My brothers and sister did, but not me. I didn't mind being in the front, but I could never expose my face to a wipe out.

I would go again. Grab the great nieces and nephews, find a hill with a soft landing, put on layers and layers and go sledding. We would start up by the garage and, if lucky, you'd make it all the way down the hill past the barn and to the bridge over the creek. Sometimes, if conditions were right, you could get across the bridge, onto the flat beyond and up the other side of the hill a bit. Ice was the worst. Hit a patch and you lost control. We'd spend hours outside. It took a good 10 minutes to drag the sled back up to the garage to ride it down again, always hoping for just the right mix of speed and dexterity to go even farther up the other side than you had before.

Sometimes, it was too dangerous to go down the hill by the barn, so we'd try to see if we could make it around the windmill and over the hump by the house. Hairpin curves are not a sled's forte. You made wide, sweeping curves. If you had to swerve quickly, the best course of action was to simply fall off the sled, which resulted in faces full of snow and lots and lots of laughter. Yeah, I'd do it again.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Images

Here's a collection of random images taken in my travels over the past month.

This reminded me of a flamingo.

The room was dark. From the doorway, I could see the cord for the light bulb. When I turned on the light, there stood these. I was startled. I probably would have actually gasped had it been the other half of the body; that feeling that I'm being watched. This was like walking into Salvador Dali's store room.

Abandoned. Tell me you don't see the face. It reminded me of Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, only that has a happy ending.

Built in the 1930's. How many people walked up and down these stairs? Admittedly, these went to a basement, so not all that many, but if they could talk, what would be the stories they could tell?

Autumn in Chicago. A typical tree along a busy street.

There was no spider to be seen. Given the state of the shed, I'm thinking this web dates from summer. It's been awhile since I've seen a web like this. Such beauty.

Usually, you see the old Airstream campers on the road. This one is new.

I'm not much of a camper. My dad loved to camp and we went out and about at least twice a year. It was never as luxurious as this although one year we rented a cabin for a weekend. I think it was a Memorial Day weekend in northern Minnesota. The only things I remember are that it was cold and damp and when dad tried to get the wood burning furnace going, out poured all these mosquitoes. There was a leak in the flue which had allowed rain to come into the belly of the furnace where it sat in a pool. He couldn't see the standing water, perfect mosquito breeding grounds, so when he tossed in the first sticks of wood and the kindling, the mosquitoes poured out the open door. We never rented a cabin after that. You can rent Airstreams for camping. My idea of "roughing it" is Motel 6 so this might be a step up from that.

Found on the ground while adjacent to a job site. Someone is not king of the world.

If I knew more chemistry, I probably could figure out what chemical reaction is going on here. Maybe it's just the salts in the plaster leeching out. I don't know. It's cool to see, however.

Finally, I should have saved the tag from these. I don't remember what they are but they have been a source of happiness all summer. They seem to like this pot and I love the way they drape over the side. I think I watered all of three times this year. We got enough, sometimes more than enough, so things didn't dry out.

Beverage:  English Teatime Tea

Deb

It's Coming

Next Monday, Autumn begins. There have been changes in the yard to remind me that fall is coming.

It's too chilly at night now to have the windows open. I have to remember to open them before I leave or the house seems close when I come home. Funny how it doesn't feel that way once November comes and I have all the windows covered in plastic. I know some people love it when the night temperatures dip into the 50's. I think good sleeping weather is mid to upper 60's. So, I go around closing windows at night and opening them during the day.

The other thing that's happening is the spiders are coming inside. I came home from work yesterday and decided to open the windows. We've had rain and a threat of it enough that I had been keeping the windows closed. But yesterday, the temperatures were in the 70's and there was not a reason to keep the windows closed, even though I have to shut them at night.

I go to open the living room window and my hand hits a mass of spider webbing. You can see one long strand in the photo but trust me when I say the whole bottom of the window was a mass of thin webbing. I opened the window and then got the broom to remove it. The girls usually sit over by this window because squirrels will go up and down the pine tree just outside it. I wondered why they hadn't been in the window. They didn't want to deal with it either.

And, on Monday, as I was brushing my teeth before bed, I felt something fall into my cleavage. Thinking I had misjudged a glop of toothpaste, I looked down to see a spider crawling across the inside of my pjs.

Now spiders don't necessarily bother me. Their benefit to the outside world in removing harmful insects is well known. If I find one, I usually chase it onto a piece of paper or the fly swatter and drop it outside. The operative word in all of this is "outside". That's where they really need to be and to stay. Crawling across the ceiling of my bathroom and then deciding to drop onto whatever they can find is not my idea of a beneficial insect.

I did not scream but I removed that pair of pajamas in record time. If there ever is a pajama removing contest, sign me up and tell me there is a spider in the top. I saw it later, crawling across the floor. before I could crush it, it darted into the pile of dirty clothes, which included the pajamas. I just scooped the whole pile up and dropped it into the laundry chute. Maybe the weight of clothing, including pairs of jeans, will crush it.

This morning, we had fog, another harbinger, at least in the Midwest, of the arrival of fall.

I don't remember when the last time was this year that weather conditions produced morning fog. I love how it makes the world smell. There were minor delays at the airports because it kind of rolled in unexpectedly but it wasn't that heavy.

We haven't had a heavy, can't see your hand in front of your face type, fog in years. I'm wondering if that's a product of global warming. Conditions are just not right anymore to develop that kind of "peering through waxed paper" fog. The world looks so different when it's foggy. We see more of this as fall approaches.

I need to buy more hot cocoa and some pumpkins and some apples.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Deep Clean

This year, we've had problems with the cleaning service in the office. We try not to be messy people and we do clean up after ourselves, but the equipment we use is out standing in its field, usually for months sometimes over a year, at a time. When you bring it back to the office, there can be mud, dust, dirt and grass on the equipment boxes. We clean as best we can and we don't clean mud off in the office. That's done outside in the grass around the building.

But, in the first part of the year, we had problems with what appeared to be no cleaning. We all noticed that the office carpet wasn't getting vacuumed as it should. A week, 10 days, two weeks would go by before we'd notice a change. In April, we decided we'd had enough and I called building management. The office was spotless the next day, except, they didn't vacuum across the hall in the offices over there. Another phone call to management.

Things were fine for 2 weeks and then nothing. Ten days went by without a carpet vacuum so I called management again. This time, the head of the cleaning service called me. She came to the office and saw the carpet which had not been vacuumed in, by this time, 12 days. Plus, they were not checking out all the garbage cans and one of them was, to put it mildly, rancid. We don't expect them to dust everywhere or wash the windows every night when they clean. We do expect that the carpet will be vacuumed and the garbage cans emptied. They keep the building bathrooms clean although, for some reason, the men's bathroom light is constantly going out. There is probably a short somewhere but maintenance hasn't found it. They just replace the bulb.

We've been moderately satisfied with what the service has done since the talk and the pointing out of the carpet. They still don't seem to empty all the wastebaskets in a timely fashion but it does get done at least once a week.

So, I was quite surprised to come into my office on a Thursday morning and find this.

I have a corner office. It has a window ledge and on that ledge I have photos and other small items. I generally don't give the ledge any thought. Obviously, the service did. Everything had been removed and the ledge dusted.

You might be thinking, "Why didn't they put it all back?" At first that was my reaction, too. It would have taken longer but you move something, dust, put it back. I guess they felt that rather than mess up my organization, they'd just leave it for me to put things back on the ledge. I just shrugged and started putting my photos where I wanted them.

That's when I noticed how unclean some of the photos were.

Ewwww. Dust. Cobwebs. Pill bug corpses. Spider balls. All my photos had something like this under or behind them. It took me a good 30 minutes to clean this off. Is it the cleaning service's responsibility to do this? I don't know. I guess it might depend upon how much you're paying them. I know, when I get coupons in the mail for cleaning services, there are tiers of clean. The most expensive tier would include moving photos to dust under and around them. We really just need them to vacuum and empty the garbage cans daily. Dusting can be done quarterly and they don't have to do the bookshelves or the equipment storage shelves. Around the copier and printer and the tops of computers and window ledges, sure, but nothing else.

I couldn't remember how I had the pictures arranged. I don't change the arrangement except when the ledge gets dusted.

I start with the big photo of Carole and I which is on the right and then put everything else around it. It works, for now. We'll check in about October, the next time the ledge gets dusted, and see if I change the arrangement.

Beverage:  Irish Breakfast tea

Deb

Easy Spider Decoration

I wanted something for the front. I did all that work back in June to repaint the front steps. Halloween is the perfect holiday to accentuate that paint job. I came up with the idea to put spiders on pumpkins. Here's the step by step to making them.

It goes without saying that you need a pumpkins. Last year, I went to Goberts, which is northwest of me, about a 45 minute drive. I had a good time, got some great stuff, but I didn't want to drive as far this year. South of me, Johannsen's has a smaller pumpkin farm with not as much selection but just what I needed. I wanted two pumpkins, one for each side of the front, not too big that lugging them around would be difficult. I would have liked a white pumpkin, but they just had orange. There were, however, various shades of orange. The pumpkins also had to have decent stems. These two were 13 and 14 pounds.

Next step was to get the pieces to make the spiders. That meant a trip to JoAnn fabrics. Thanks to being on their "preferred customer" list, I had a coupon for 20% off my order. There are two sizes of styrofoam balls, black "chenille" sticks (I call 'em pipe cleaners.), white fuzzy yarn to make the web, googly eyes and a small can of black spray paint. I could have sworn I had a package of googly eyes but I couldn't find it. Not shown: toothpicks and glue. A complete supply list is at the end.

First thing to do is cover the work surface with newspaper. Next, you'll need a small and a large styrofoam ball. The large size is the body and the small size is the head. I chose a more polished ball for the head.

Now, you'll need to spray paint both balls black. Normally, I do this outside, but there was a breeze today which would have made spray painting very inexact and you want the balls to be as black as you can make them. I formed a small "cave", if you will, by folding over the newspaper and proceeded to spray in small bursts.

The force of the spray paint would move the ball around so I could get most of the sides just spraying in bursts. I took a toothpick and used that to manipulate the balls so I could assure a somewhat even coverage. I like how, in the photo above, the smaller ball looks like a quarter moon complete with meteor craters.

Once you get an even coverage, or as even as pleases you, you need to let these dry. I let them dry for 90 minutes. If you are using the smooth surface ball, you'll know when it's dry because it will go from a shiny sheen to a flat sheen. That doesn't take 90 minutes. The reason you wait that long is because the other ball, with its nooks and crannies, has small puddles of black paint in those nooks. You want the total surface to be as dry as possible because you're going to be holding the ball and you don't want paint on your hands. While you're waiting, take a toothpick and stick it into the middle of one "side" of a small ball.

When the balls are dry, you're ready to build a spider. Take a small ball and, if you haven't stuck the toothpick into the middle, do so now. It shouldn't go all the way through, just in about 3/4ths of an inch. Spread some good old white glue onto the section of toothpick that sticks out and shove that into the middle of one of the larger balls. There you have the spider's body. The glue, when it dries, won't be visible and this helps ensure the spider won't come apart. Here are the finished bodies all ready for legs.

Now, take one body and 8 pipe cleaners. Remember, spiders have 8 legs. Many cartoons and even some decorations show them with 6. Insects have 6 legs. Spiders have 8. Spiders are not insects.

Take one pipe cleaner, cover one end about 1/2 inch worth with glue and stick it into the large body. Remember, you're putting 4 on each side so you'll need to eyeball where on the body you want the legs to go. Here's where I had to make an adjustment.

The out-of-the package size of pipe cleaner was too long, even for a pseudo daddy longlegs. I wound up cutting about 4 inches off the end of the leg. You'll have to decide if the length of the chenille sticks are too long or just right. If I'd used larger styrofoam balls, I probably wouldn't have had to trim, as they would have been more relevant to body size.

Once I determined the length of my legs, I trimmed enough for both spiders. I didn't realize these sticks came in a variety of colors, either. I was expecting to have to spray paint them too, which would have added more time to the project. At JoAnn Fabrics, they are located next to the styrofoam balls, which made them very easy to find. I think there were 6 different colors.

Put glue on the end of each stick and shove it into the styrofoam body. The sticks probably don't need the glue, but this will help keep them anchored in the body. When you're done with that, it does look like a spider.

Last step is to give it a wee bit of personality. Take a couple of googly eyes and glue them onto the smooth ball. In actuality, where my spiders are positioned, you can't see the eyes, but you might put yours somewhere else and the eyes add a nice touch.

Here's where using the smooth ball is good. With the usual styrofoam ball, it's got all those nooks and crannies. That, when spray painted, looks a bit like hair and most spiders have some hair on their bodies. Trying to put enough glue on one of those balls to make the eyes stick would have been frustrating. A drop on each of the eyes and they stuck nicely to the smooth surface ball. For additional personality, depending upon where your spider is going, you could add a grin or fangs. Just draw them on white paper, cut them out, and glue to complete the face.

Now we're going to take our finished spiders outside. First step there was to decide where to put the pumpkins. Here's the north side of the front steps.

And here's the south side of the steps. Take your yarn or string, if that's what you'd like to use, and start webbing your pumpkin. I wound up cutting hunks of yarn instead of trying to stuff the skein through the slats of the railings. You'll want to drape the yarn around the pumpkin. I selected a yarn that had a fuzzy design to it. I thought it looked more 'spider-ish' than a straight yarn. I had, originally, wanted a very heavy weight yarn, but the JoAnn where I went didn't have anything like that.

I tied the yarn to the slats of the railing and just did some freestyle weaving down, around, over and back up to the railing. The yarn wouldn't stay on the pumpkin very well so I wound up taking a push pin, sticking it through several strands of yarn and then pushing it into the stem of the pumpkin. Once anchored, the yarn sort of stayed put. Here's the south side completely done.

When I had what I felt was enough "webbing", I took a spider and put her where I thought she looked the best. The sticks (legs) are bent and anchored to the webbing. If you have several web strands tied to your porch, those are the best place to anchor 3-4 of her legs. She moves with the webbing so when the wind blew, she stayed on the web and didn't blow off. I repeated the process for the north side of the front.

Spiders are much better than I'll ever be at spinning uniform webs, but it came out okay. You can see that my googly eyes don't show unless you're looking at the spider from the perspective of the pumpkin.

I have no idea how this will hold up in a rain or a stiff wind so we'll see.  I'll just need to watch this the rest of the month and see how it handles the weather.

If I have to make more spiders, I think I'll change the location of the smaller ball in relation to the larger ball. If it's placed at an angle, then the googly eyes would show. If you wanted, you could stick the free end of the legs into the pumpkin and have your spider on the pumpkin. Here's the effect on the front.

It's just enough decoration for me. After Halloween, I have plans for those pumpkins. These are not the pie kind. We'll see how soggy they are on November 1st. 

I hope you found this interesting and if someone tries this, I'd love to see your photos of the finished product. Happy decorating.

Supply list:  pumpkins

1 package large styrofoam balls - rough finish

1 package small styrofoam balls - smooth finish

1 package black chenille sticks

1 package googly eyes

1 small can black spray paint

1 skein white fuzzy yarn

2 push pins

toothpicks

Elmer's All-purpose glue

Newspaper to cover the work surface

Beverage: Dr Pepper

Deb

Didn't I Just Do This?

I took a couple days off in the middle of this week. That was incredible foresight on my part as I was not well on Tuesday and would have had to call off. I was better by early afternoon and so decided to start cleaning up the kitchen again. I have a hankering for chocolate baked goods although I realized, when I made whole wheat pancakes Tuesday morning, that I am woefully low on flour. But in order to messy up the kitchen I have to clean it first. I organized the dishes and prepared to fill the sink with hot, soapy water and found this.

I swear. Did I just toss one of these outside not two weeks ago? Maybe I just drowned it because it had spun a web between the drainer and the sink wall. This was done overnight, just, boom, there it was because I know it wasn't there Monday evening.

Yes, it's fall. The spiders are starting to come inside. I just have to chuckle and shake my head. Just what did she think she'd catch in this? I took it outside and banged it on the deck so she'd fall out and scurry away. I'm going to have to watch it now, however. It seems like it's several weeks early for them to be coming inside.

Beverage:  Dunkin Donuts tea

Deb

Heralds of Fall

I always know fall is just around the corner when the quarter-sized spiders start spinning webs next to the house.

There are three separate webs here; one at the upper right, one at the lower right and one at the left middle. I saw the occupant of the lower right for awhile over the last two weeks but he/she has been absent since Thursday. I won't touch these until all the leaves have fallen off the tree at the NW corner of the house. The leaves on the bottom tiers are dropping but it's still green along the canopy top. I guess I can anticipate the spiders moving inside now too. Usually when they make webs next to the house they are preparing for coming inside.

The leaves float or are driven, depending upon the wind, onto the deck and some wind up in the birdbath.

I rather liked the image of the leaves in the water. I changed it however and put fresh water in because the bath gets slimy if leaves are left in it. There are a pair of cardinals using the bath exclusively now. I haven't seen any robins in it but the robins haven't left for the year. There were two in the trees singing yesterday.

Fall is just around the corner. It's been quite the summer.

Beverage:  Water

Deb