Killing Plants-Watering Wednesdays: Fears
Assuming we all have fears…
Some more rational than others….

No lie. I actually dreaded this happening. I think it was Jaws 3-D where something like this was featured.
I don’t fear a great white in a pool anymore, after all I’m grown now and put childhood fears behind me…mostly.
A Critters movie (1 or 2, I don’t recall) also played a role in this fear, which still plagues me today. I refuse to let any body part hang off the bed.

And last but not least-this one may still cause me some alarm on nights when the husband is out of town-

But seriously, for the most part I’ve recovered from childhood fears…except one.
S P I D E R S
I’ve come a long way from shrieking at the sight of one in the house. Usually I calmly grab a shoe and smash it to smithereens. This is because I’m hoping not to pass fears onto my children who watch everything I do. Then again, they think every spider is either a tarantula or a black widow-perhaps I’m not as effective as I think.
As mentioned previously, the land our house is on is halfway surrounded by marsh and our back and side yard are fully wooded, wooded and expanding. By expanding, I mean the weeds/bushes are starting to creep back over our yard.
I forgot to take a ‘before’ picture, but this is after. The vines were atrocious and snarling into bushes and trees alike, making everything a tangled mess (my fingers ached after all this work of pulling vines and tugging weeds). It’s also debris pickup this week in my neighborhood-perfect timing.
It’s all well and good until I get to the small dogwood tree (seen to the middle left of picture). I cleared on one side then started to work on the other, gung-ho and all, when I spotted this:

…like 2 feet away from my face. I jumped back, turned into a ninja warrior with astounding karate moves…until I was sure I was on safe, solid ground and it was snug in its web. It moved and with sick fascination I watched, still having the heebie jeebies.
For those of you unfamiliar with this particular creature-it’s commonly referred to as a banana spider or by it’s real name: Golden Silk Orb Spider. After some research, it seems they are useful to gardeners because they eat a variety of mosquitos, flies, moths, stinkbugs, and grasshoppers, but their webs also trap butterflies and bees-two species I’m trying to encourage.
We’ll discuss more spiders and butterflies next week!
TIP: Golden orb spiders are too BIG to smash with shoe, therefore, I’ll just stay away from them
