spider lessons

sunrise:  6:18

Although the most glorious light of the year may be autumn afternoons, the sun's light in the latter half of September is pretty spectacular at any time of day, and dawn is no exception.

We are on the eve of official autumn.  I needed two layers of jacket today and wondered if I should have worn gloves.  I was worried that I might have lost the basil in our herb garden, since it felt as though there may have been a slight frost.  Basil is particularly wimpy about frost and immediately turns black - but mine looks like it made it through last night.

I had never noticed this stone in the ground before today.  It looks kind of like some part of the globe.  Asia?   Somewhere in the Caribbean?









I continue to be mesmerized by our lawn spiders - or, by their architectural efforts anyway.  From some angles you may be able to see how they have created a tent city out of the fields behind the pond.

I wonder if the different constructions reflect different spider species.  I only see the actual spiders on the traditional Halloween style webs, but there are these tentlike creations as well - large and small.

This tiny one, anchored by a single blade of grass as a mast, is elegant.  Looks like a bedouin tent all decked out in tiny Christmas lights.

The spiders themselves give me the creeps, but I can't help admiring them.  They perform this incredible work of beauty, diligent in their travail.  Then they sit and wait.  Hours and hours, they just sit at the center of their brilliant trap/alarm system/home, waiting for something to respond to.

Lessons from a spider -  hard work and patience in equal measure.  There are times in life to work non-stop, times of creating and producing.  Then there are times when you need to just sit still and wait for a call to action.

Reminds me of motherhood.  There is a lot of preparation, then after that you spend years responding to calls to action.  In the earliest years there is very little time spent in the center of the web waiting.  In fact, every fleeting moment at rest in the center of the web is a blissful relief.  Later there is more time to rest, but you still need to be there at the hub - because calls to action might come from school or a cell phone or the orthodontist  at any time.

Now that my kids are grown, I no longer need to be waiting diligently at the center of my web.  There are still calls; I'm still ready to respond, but my response time can be slower now.  Now there's time to get back out there into the field and start producing and creating something new for a while.  There may be a new web, or several, and I'll have other vibrations on the other webs to demand my attention.  There may be a lot more excitement and hard work and activity.

Until I'm ready to retire permanently to command central.  Once there I'll sit patiently during my declining years, happy on my original and most beloved web, waiting for any calls to action that may still require my attention.