Every spring I look for
argiope aurantia, commonly know as the Black and Yellow Garden Spider. If you don't like spiders, this variety is considered harmless to humans. With the elaborate web she weaves, I've come to enjoy watching these year after year. They start out each spring finding a spot where she will spend the rest of her days; tiny webs at first growing up to two feet across in late summer.
These Garden Spiders mate once a year, then lay their eggs at night and form a ball of silk around them. She guards her sack as long as she is able. As the fall nights cool, she becomes more frail and dies around the first hard frost. Her
hatchlings, the size of a speck of dust, will exit the pod in the spring. The
teenies then exude a strand of silk that gets caught by a breeze, and fly away...
Well, she is still here, hanging by a thread. It is still hot here so she has been busy. I thought you might like to see what my garden spider has been up to these last three weeks. She's just about given everything she has and senses the cold days approaching before her inevitable, final bow. What a spider!
Every spring I look for argiope aurantia, commonly know as the Black and Yellow Garden Spider. If you don't like spiders, this variety is considered harmless to humans. With the elaborate web she weaves, I've come to enjoy watching these year after year. They start out each spring finding a spot where she will spend the rest of her days; tiny webs at first growing up to two feet across in late summer.
