Showing posts with label spider skin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spider skin. Show all posts

1.8.09

Itsy Bitsy




For me, the end of summer is heralded by spiders - as if by magic, the garden is strung with magnificent, stringy webs, and at the centre of each one, a plump bottomed garden spider. I am not a big fan of spiders, but these copper and cream beauties are so stunning that I don't mind them, even when they spin their webs across my washing. But of course, they don't just magically appear. For the last month, I have been noticing miniature versions in the cottage, and popping them outside. Today I found evidence of just how fast they grow. This tiny skin must have been recently sloughed, for I saw the owner hastily scrambling up her safety line as I approached.







Put next to a normal black peppercorn and medium egg, it is like a miniscule glass sculpture.





Here is the owner, watching me, watching her - from the ceiling. Now her body is about 2-3 mm in diameter, still a far cry from her destination size, which can be nearly 2cm - and that's just her bottom - or, technically, abdomen.





To put her into perspective - there she is, a little dark speck in the top right hand side of the picture. Since then she has been relocated to an outside shrub, where one day in early autumn I may find her catching the flotsam of dying summer insects, her web sparkling with dew diamonds.