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"Happiness always looks small when you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and at once you learn how big and precious it is."
Maxim Gorky

Showing posts with label spiders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spiders. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

The water pearl spinners...

The rain today was ‘soft’. That's what the Irish say.
The Scottish may call it ‘smirr’, a gentle rain or maybe ‘harr’, a mist from the sea…
any way you put it the moisture left a silver coating on any spider web
otherwise invisible the day before...
This day showed off delicate pearls strung together along silken wires...
...a tightrope balancing act designed by eight legged engineers. A bridge builders dream...
The webs would billow slightly on the softest breeze and still they stayed in tact…
If not, tomorrow there’ll be another. Woven through the night, strung between any two anchors that serve the spider well.
A place of silent capture, of hours of patient waiting, anticipating another meal.
And all I can do is marvel in my love of the design…
...my thrill to see these webs highlighted by a simple rain. 
A thing I didn’t see the day before. A thing I walked into clumsily only last week…

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Isn't she lovely?

There's a spot outside our sliding glass doors where, every fall, a
big fat meadow spider makes a web...
Probably not the same one, but it must be a good spot...
She sits ever so patiently, her back turned to the warmth of the sun...
 She's also known as a pumpkin spider...how appropriate for this day!
 Her fancy Latin name is Araneus marmoreus...I like pumpkin spider better...

She belongs to a group of orb weaving spiders...
According to Wikipedia...
"Araneus spiders possess various venom's, but will deliver a dry bite on 8 of 10 occasions. Females bite more often than males, who would rather flee or feign death."
Smart males.
They make the most beautiful and typical spider webs of intricate and mind boggling
engineering designs.
Did you know early bridge builders studied spider webs in making their designs?
Sometimes the beauty is in the details...

Happy Halloween!


 

Monday, March 18, 2013

A delicate balance...

The other morning the world around here was covered in fine webs.
 Everywhere I looked they were stretched from here to there and back again....
A cats cradle of the finest silk string...
 Nature is always there to remind us...
 ...of the fragility...
 ...the strength...
 ...the pursuit of perfection...
 The need to connect to something solid...
 To anchor ourselves ...
 To find the right zone...
 Sometimes life makes no sense.
 Leaves us incomplete...
 How it can all fall apart in one breath...
 But in the end how beautiful it all is...
 
 "Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature.
It will never fail you."
Frank Lloyd Wright.