Anyone who has known me for more than about 10 minutes will quickly become familiar with my opinions about spiders. I don’t do spiders.
That having been said, I have mostly gotten over my childhood reactions to anything with eight legs. I say mostly because while I don’t run and shriek at the very thought of creepy crawlies anymore, I can say with fair truth that a wolf spider in my laundry room taught me how to teleport a few years back. And my interpretation of the Save Me From The Spider dance could be done in three separate acts with a full ballet company and a complete symphony orchestra.

Let’s just sum it up by saying that so long as it’s smaller than the ball of my thumb, not crawling on me, not venomous, and doesn’t startle me, I’m just fine with spiders.

And I can seriously appreciate what spiders do for my gardens. I’ve not had a single leaf hopper or aphid on my roses this year.

But I’ve never really appreciated how cool spiders are. Mostly because I’ve never had the inclination to sit and watch one for long enough to see it do anything more than just be an ikky little octopod that needs to be squooshed.

This morning though…

I’ve been seeing a physical therapist for a massive and gnarly tweak in my back that has been making me miserable for about the last six weeks. The physical therapist is a sadist, as all of them are, but at least she’s a nice sadist and she is helping un-tweak my back. Ideally I should be back in shape to then tweak the rest of me on the three day in 3 weeks.
In addition to being a sadist with regards to her expectations of my abilities to turn myself into a pretzel and flail around on the floor, she’s got a rotten schedule. At least she’s got a rotten schedule as far as it interacts with my schedule.
So I’m scheduled for my PT appointments on Fridays at gawdawful a.m. meaning that I get up early on the first day of my weekend to go and visit with a sadist who wants me to turn myself into a pretzel and flail around on the floor.

And this morning at gawdawful a.m. I went out on to the porch to dump the cat’s water dish on the basil planter when I spotted a spider. I’ve been keeping track of this spider for at least a week. Mostly because she(?) has been in my way having inconveniently strung her web between the main support for the pink rose trellis over our kitchen window and a frond of said rose that I’ve been wanting to weave back into the main body of the bush. But I don’t like to disturb occupied spider webs so I’ve been holding off until Ms. Spider packs it up and decamps for other realms. Which may never happen at this rate, Ms. Spider spent the morning weaving a new web.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually sat and watched a spider weave her web before. This morning it was quiet, it was just past sunrise, it was a very pleasant temperature, the neighbors’ chickens were burbling about behind the fence, and there was Ms. Spider doing some very cool things with her back legs and her spinnerets.

I still don’t like spiders. I’ll still jump and screech the next time a member of the colony of wolf spiders that lives in our house during the late summer and fall shows its ugly, hairy self.
But I’ve gotta appreciate Ms. Spider in my rose bush. That was really cool.