Staying Limber Doing The "Spider Limbo"

I didn’t see it coming.  There is a small portion of my daily walk with the dog that I can actually have him off-leash, and I was lost in thought, when, wham, my head and upper torso were completely swathed in spider webbing.  Even I say, “Yuck!”  Followed by, “Sorry, I am so sorry, I wasn’t paying attention”. I was encased in webbing from my head to my waist, complete with all the victims of the past nights hunt, wrapped in their spider saran wrap.  Double yuck, and for the next 10 minutes of the walk I am trying to peel it off my white shirt, and untangle web wisps from hair wisps.

May I say, again, “Everything’s bigger in Texas” and this orb weaver was THE biggest spider I think I have ever seen.  Larger then the Black and Yellow Garden Spider I was familiar with on the Cape,

 it is omnipresent along the path I take through the Ashe Junipers with the dog.  I did some research and it is called, appropriately, a Giant (amen to that) Lichen (for its beautiful green camouflage that looks lichen-like) Orb Weaver.  (Araneus bicenterairius) 

Named by one, Rev McCook, who went from Civil War chaplain as part of his family, the “Fighting McCooks”, to later a civilian minister who loved all things Arachnid and would write a three volume set on the Orb weavers alone. (This fact and so many others used in this blog were gained by reading a most wonderfully in-depth Bug blog by Jerry Cates, found at BugsInTheNews.com )

It turns out that this is a fairly rare spider (not on my trail it isn’t!).  However, the recent spring rains produced a bumper crop of grasshoppers and has provided more food than even a spider of this size can eat, and so, they are flourishing.  Good for them.  It is an Orb weaver, but one that leaves the center of the circle open instead of filling it with “writing” as in the garden spider I mentioned above. (new fact to me: that “writing” is termed “stablimenta”) 

  But its huge body fills the space nicely when it is there, and it makes the web easier to spot and to dodge.  Which brings us to the title of this little piece.  I find I have to “limbo” under them, and as there are 5 in a row, as I walk up this hill it is quite a workout!  Singing the Chubby checkers song “Doing the Limbo rock”, I go on my way.

Yesterday the encounter brought one of those serendipitous moments where I arrived just as dinner was being “wrapped up” as it were.  The spider was spinning the latest victim turning it in silk so quickly you would have thought it was on a lathe. 

 Wow, I love that and again, if you can find it in your heart to be wowed by spiders, do some reading on their silk production.  They can spin so many different types of silk, all different strengths for different uses.  The silk is stronger than steel, yet flexible, and when they utilize all their different kinds of silk to wrap the egg cases; the eggs can easily survive through the harshest of climates. And as I can testify, the webbing clings to clothes and hair with a stunning tenacity.

For that matter, I am just in from, “walking the land” and I repeated the “wham, oh yuck, oh sorry” episode in my own yard, for one is stringing a web across a path that I use every day to get to a bird feeder.  I explained it would not be wise to continue with this web site, but I can’t say it was listening.  If not, I may be shimmying under this one at the crack of dawn when bird feeders are filled.  “How low can you go?” We shall see.

Under the Texas Sun

Every summer, since I first discovered Francis Mayes book, ”Under the Tuscan Sun” and all the other books that would follow, I have begun my summer listening to one or the other on CD’s and it takes me away to a Piazza where I am talking and gesturing with my hands and kissing bambinos and strolling and laughing.  She makes her experience come alive and it is easy to imagine yourself there.   And when I am cooking, I give an extra flourish to my chopping while I listen to her simple and elegant, fresh from the market or garden, dishes.  It doesn’t matter if I am only making macaroni and cheese, just listening makes me feel I am beside her as a great Italian cook.

So I love them, I love them all.  My grandfather came from Bologna and I love embracing this heritage, although, if the truth be known, I am also half Scotch and English back to the Mayflower days.  But I always thought the Italians lifted their glasses in a toast far more often than the British so they are the DNA I will claim.

Now, here I am living in the Hill Country of TX where many a development is named “Tuscan Heights, Tuscan Hills, Tuscan Ranch” etc.   Truly the topography is similar, even the plants probably have their cousins across the sea there, and the homes are made of TX limestone and a few have Spanish tiles and there are even vineyards, so when I want to mentally escape, that is where I go- to Tuscany without ever leaving the driveway.

Imitation being the highest form of flattery, I could easily have a run down of my own“Under the Texas sun” impressions:

-Under the Texas Sun my plants that are not from these parts are wilting.

-Under the Texas Sun the insects are humming and thrumming and mating and somehow not coming up desiccated.

-Under the Texas Sun the birds that visit the porch are panting.

-Under the Texas Sun the squirrels are splayed on the live oak branches that dangle over the open plate feeder, too hot to make the effort.

-Under the Texas Sun I am going nowhere, my husbands car is out of commission this week. Fine, have mine, for without AC I am more than content to stay in my own Tuscan villa.

 

-Under the Texas Sun the native plants are miraculously thriving.  Sending out wheels of white, the , interestingly named, black-foot daisy, blooms and re-blooms from nothing but rubble. It seems nothing less than miraculous to me.  Amazing-plant adaptations, take off your hat in respect as you pass by.

-Under the Texas Sun I no longer care that all the birds have eaten the apples, the peaches, the plums.  It’s too hot to can anyways.

-Under the Texas Sun I am somehow surviving though I thought I never would.

And it is only June 13^th.  Wait till summer arrives.

Frances, thank you for making all these impressions, not just hot, but evocative of living in my “people’s” home- Bella Tuscany!!

June- Harvest Time in Texas

Now in my mind, that does not compute.   JUNE, harvest time?  Don’t you mean September?  Not in Texas apparently. I think, soon, my garden will just be a crispy critter. If these temperatures hold up, I shall be picking stewed tomatoes, that is, if there are any tomatoes left to pick. Who knew that Golden-fronted Woodpeckers liked tomatoes above all else?  Lets back up a bit here and share what this first year of Texas gardening has been like. 

First, the notion of planting the garden no later than mid-March was wild.  I am used to putting in a potato by St Patrick’s Day but the rest always had to wait for at least late May.  But of course, here things heat up quickly, so in it went.  And then because sun and heat were abundant, things grew in a “Jack and the Beanstalk” manner -tomatoes shot up and through their cages in no time.  I was double-checking that I knew where my canner was and thinking, along with the peppers, that I could make enough salsa to go to market with.

Also, the previous owner had been kind enough to plant fruit trees, something I always had wished we had had, but in our active-duty military life, moves of every 2-3 yrs made that pretty impractical.  Now, here I was, proud owner of peach, plum, apple, pomegranate, loquats and then some.  Wahoo!  But, hold it right there Tex, don’t reach for the canner too soon, for what I had failed to factor in was my wily competition. 

I have always fed the birds, but I had forgotten how varied their diet could be.  Plums? Yum, peaches, well, there used to be an old song, “Going to the Country Going to Pick a lot of Peaches”. It was popular when my children were young and we lived in PA where people DO pick a lot of peaches, maybe it was just a local hit.  Either way, here it could definitely be re-mastered to say “Going to the Country, Going to PECK a lot of Peaches”.  

 As we speak, what was salvaged from the pecked over crop is resting under cotton sheets attempting to ripen from its still-to-green state.  A pair of Mockingbirds were the confirmed culprits.  My neighbor was out of town for a week and sadly I see their once heavily laden tree is now empty of fruit.  Somewhere in the bushes lie some pretty bloated birds.

With my tomatoes, I had managed to get a small basket of Celebrity tomatoes and cherry tomatoes and they were DELICIOUS.  Clearly though, I wasn’t the only one to think so, for soon, even the tiniest hint of color would appear and next day it would just be a hollowed out shell. Mockingbirds again, but then I started to see the aforementioned woodpecker clinging to the tomato stick and for one naïve moment I thought, good it will help with the squash bugs, but no, wham, wham, it started hammering right into a green tomato.  

What’s a non-violent gardener to do?  Finally wise up and buy netting.  I did, and now I watch as it sits upon the stick looking frustrated, if a bird can look frustrated, that these tomatoes below him are ripening and he isn’t getting a beak full. HA! But now I feel guilty, so watch I hang some suet today or some offering to soften the blow.

More disturbing though, are my cucumbers that are growing and flowering to beat the band but no cucumbers appear.  Ditto the pomegranate tree that was covered with flowers but only has three pomegranates developing on it.  One plum tree produced prodigiously, another, only three.  My mind goes to pollinators, or lack there of.  I hope it is because of something else, but bees that were buzzing all over the acacia tree in April, seem completely gone now.  Its rare that I hear any buzzing (maybe they can’t be heard because of the continuing katydid din –see previous blogs), and so sadly, I fear my garden is the poster child for what life looks like without pollinators.  Maybe someone clever will read this and can tell me what else it might be.

I have said before that thankfully my livelihood isn’t linked to my success as a gardener and that I really should just see this as very kind of me to make sure that even our feathered friends are meeting the requirement to “strive for five”.  Just doing my part to make it a healthier America for everyone, birds included.