Location, location, location

Although Fall is officially here, it is still very much summer in the Ozarks. The last flowers of summer are putting on a dazzling display, mostly yellow but also some purple asters and white flowers as well. It’s still very noisy: The crickets, grasshoppers, and the other singing insects are still serenading us throughout the day and night; I even heard a cicada yesterday, this late in the year. And the attraction to moths of the light streaming from the bedroom window at night has also attracted a large, pale brown spider to build its web right in front of the bedroom window just about every night. It is a perfect spot, and the spider has been quite successful. As the phrase goes, “location is everything.” R went out on the deck last night to look at it while I was in the shower and pretty soon he was in the bathroom with me washing his hands. His response when I stuck my head around the shower curtain: “I put my hand on the door when I went out and touched a slug” (been there, done that; slug slime is very hard to wash off, take my word for it). The other night we were outside at 10 p.m. looking at two of the same type of spider. They were building webs in front of house. At night, I have to bring in the lard mixture I feed the birds because the raccoons get it and I noticed them when I went out. One was right in front of the maple tree where I hang the lard mixture and the other was right across the driveway near the walnut tree. R remarked that I would have an obstacle course in the morning, but I reminded him that it wasn’t likely to happen – these spiders only build at night, and then they take the web down while it is still dark out, so that by morning there is nothing to show that a spider was ever there. Soon this amusement will be gone: the first frost isn’t far off. The moths will quit flying to the light, and whatever happens to the spiders in the winter will happen, and the crickets will quit singing, and the silence of winter will settle over the land.