Speaking of Spiders…

Here’s the Saint Andrews Cross spider that lives amongst my dying tomato plants. (I have another three beds with tomatoes in it that aren’t sick like this one)

She’s actually quite large. Not sure the picture shows just how big she actually is. (I think it’s a she as one of her babies seems to have set up home in a smaller web next to hers. Which keeps getting broken as I pick last fruits and tend to the broccoli that also lives in that bed.)

We lived in Sydney once. It feels like a lifetime ago. Actually it was. We only had two children then. Not three. We had a massive backyard that was so big the Man actually mowed a cricket pitch into it and would have me playing cricket with him every night until dark. (Our kids weren’t big enough to play cricket yet)

Well I managed to bowl the husband out and as he went to push the stump back in, he found a funnel webs hole. Of course, he being who he is, decided it would be in our best interests to make sure it was an EMPTY funnel web hole. (read, excuse to poke deadly spiders with sticks.)

The Hole wasn’t empty people. And the funnel web that exploded from it was huge! I wish I’d had a camera. (Funnel webs aren’t massive spiders, but this was massive for a funnel web) And she was angry.

I had all sorts of images in my head of my husband dying from a spider bite. To my relief he stopped tormenting it and just killed it. He made sure there were no more in the hole by digging the hole out. But yeah, testosterone. Seriously. was so glad none of the children witnessed that behaviour. Although, all my kids are pretty terrified of spiders. (Well the littlest one not so much. He’s way too much like his Dad that one.)

My Saint Andrews Cross spider can stay until I pull my vegetable gardens down for the move. He helps with pest control.