Going out for our walk this morning, the dogs and I spotted this orb spider just outside the door to the deck, feasting on a June bug caught in her web. Come morning's end, the bug will be an empty shell and the spider will be sleeping off her meal in a far corner of her web, which is anchored on one end to a climbing rose and on the other to the porch light. A strategic location, if what you're after is dinner.
Webs are all the fashion these July days, and a foggy early morning is the time to see them. Here's one draped like a string of diamonds across the path by the creek. This time of year, the webs are arresting, festooned like tattered scrim from tall stalks of grass, swagged along a lichen-embroidered branch, strung shimmering from one tree to another across what must be a vast distance to a tiny spider, like tossing a filament over the Grand Canyon. The celebration of a cool, wet summer, by trillions of tiny web-working creatures.
Returning to the garden (or what's left of it, after July's deluges), I pause to admire other tiny things. The rim of a leaf, silvered, more beautiful than any artist's work. The scarlet twist of a romantic Turk's cap. A fat soot-colored toad napping under the rim of the dog's dish.
And this grasshopper, navigating a rainforest of tall green leaves, king of his stalk, untroubled by my giant self.
Reading note. Here, this, is It. The world as it is, is Heaven.--Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums