Garden Spirits

I suppose I've made a short of shrine in the back yard by placing the folate head garden sculpture I purchased last September underneath the Child Fort / arbor.   At the time, I was thinking that I might somehow attach it to a stone pillar and set it back in the laurels or other part of the shrubbery, but I think I'll see how well the grape vines grow around it next Summer.  

Who this shrine is to remains to be seen.  I'm hesitant to say "The Green Man," because of all of the Victorian back-projection of a literary figure onto mediaeval baptismal font carvings.  Perhaps attaching pink triangle earrings, or finding pink triangular tiles as a backing would give a contemporary gay flavor that would help invoke the gay male divine.  If I were feeling particularly daring or motivated enough, I might try to find some reproduction of an ancient Fascinus from Pompeii to hang near by (John promptly loses time reviewing Etsy sites...).

When I took down the Writing Pavilion for the Winter, I discovered several packets of spider's eggs (and a few attending arachnid mothers).  I used a dried stem of a poppy to deposit the silken wraps of eggs in the narrow space behind the heavy stone god's head, which felt like something out of a story.  Maybe after hordes of spiders have emerged in the spring it will have more of the numinous about it.  

If only there were a stronger feeling that the folate head were a mask that the growing things in our yard are borrowing, but right now it feels like a concrete idol.  In contrast, the Sphinx in the garden feels more like something with a secret, even if it's only knowledge about finding shade from the goldenrod.  

Now all I need is a 3ft x 4ft x 5ft slab of obsidian or basalt or hematite and I'll be able to have midnight rituals... or... something... although, now that I think about it more, it would probably be just me brooding in the candle light and shooing the cats off of it while secretly imagining a bacchanal before reprising Dot's song, "...if I were a folly girl."

Oh well. 

Last Lazy Sunday of September

Today is a lazy Sunday.  The morning's fog has finally burned off and white clouds are scudding along a blue sky.  Mark and I had thought to go to the beach, but Mark suggested that maybe we could put it off a week; I was feeling disinclined to spend hours in a car, so I agreed.

I spent the morning sipping some tea, listening to Sunday Baroque, and virtually visiting the chapels of Oxford via a booklet put together here:  

http://www.cleverpaper.co.uk/dominic_price/stained%20glass/mobile/index.html?fbclid=IwAR1doslfpq6E6w7eC9ZphmSPkiJmt9u4wctJjVca83kjDX19vXxhYTN7lIY#p=55  

and I came to the conclusion that Pamela Colman Smith must have been influenced by various stained glass windows when she created the images in the Rider-Waite tarot deck. 

Slightly related, I've been having some fun watching Dr. Colleen Darnell and her husband, Dr. John C. Darnell, at The Vintage Egyptologist:  https://www.youtube.com/c/VintageEgyptologist/featured  

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The spiders are out and building their webs.  There are at least three visible from the back deck; they each hold quarter-sized orb-weaver spiders (I think).  The brown and dun bands on their legs and abdomens remind me of rattan.  I'm guessing the larger spiders are the females.  Yesterday I'm pretty sure I saw a mating ritual; a larger spider sat near the edge of its web and strummed one of the strands.  A smaller spider slowly advanced along the threads.  They faced each other, the smaller spider waving three or more legs so that the tips just brushed the larger spider's legs.  The smaller spider moved closer and closer, occasionally tagging the larger spider, then rushing away as if to a avoid a tag-back.  The larger spider eventually folded its legs close to its body and held still.  The smaller spider quickly wrapped its legs around the larger one (?pinning its legs?) and pressed its abdomen against the larger one.  About ten seconds later, it dashed off, quick as lightning, and hid under a nearby leaf.  The larger spider unfolded and splayed across several web strands.  I didn't stay to watch, but I think they were going to do it again.

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The hummingbirds continue to visit the fountain.  I'm torn between wanting to go out and get a feeder for them and the knowledge that eventually Cicero and Smokey will tolerate Aoife enough to venture back into the back yard.  Cicero's bad enough with dragonflies and snakes, and I can imagine catching and torturing hummingbirds would be great sport for him. 

Araneus diadematus

The other day Mark looked down at the plants growing by our front door and discovered a clump of teeny, tiny, yellow spiders with little black dots on their abdomens. 

Then he discovered another clump. 

The succulent they were on had been covered in about a hundred tiny webs and they were working on colonizing a nearby fern.

The Child took one look, said, "Nope!" and retreated inside.  There was some good-natured teasing about bringing the clump inside, but Mark squashed that idea with conjecture about how ironic it would be if I turned out to be allergic to them after bringing them in.

I wondered if they were clumped together because they were cold, and tried breathing on them.  They spread out, but I think they really wanted to clump together because they didn't go very far. 

I did some quick research; I think they're Araneus diadematus (cross orbweaver) spiders, and once they get old enough, they'll go their separate ways and turn into much larger spiders.