I said a week or so ago that it wasn’t really the Dog Days of summer at my house but rather the “bug” days. So anything that helps me with bugs in the garden is a good thing by me.
This time of year, the spiders begin taking over everything. And as much as I hate that (I used to have true arachnaphobia. Just the mere mention of spiders would be enough to give me goose bumps!), I am smart enough to know that these relatively small critters are my garden friends (and no, we don’t generally have the venomous type here. It’s generally too cold ).
So I have learned to make my peace whenever I see spiders outside and to even avoid watering their webs. It doesn’t help–the webs generally are back the next day. Or in a few scary instances, it drives the spiders inside. Why would I want that, when they should be outside catching bugs?
I can even appreciate the difference between the orb weavers (the traditional spider webs), the sheet weavers, (spiders that make webs on grass or shrubs), the funnel web weavers (like a sheet weaver with a funnel). The ones that I am still not quite happy about are the ones that don’t make website and just jump on their prey. I mostly just stumble upon them in the garden, and while they do their best to scurry away, I still wish we hadn’t crossed paths to begin with.
Overall, I no longer scream when a spider and I cross paths although I might still jump. Thank goodness for both the spider and the neighbors.
