I am honoring myself with my 30th blog with this personal story.

I admit it, spiders scare me.  This is the time of year when Orb Spiders are here in New York. Big plump spiders that have ringed markings on their legs.  They are the vampires of the night. They always manage to make their webs where a door is.  Like guess who’s coming for dinner? Oh boy!

I am not set up to take night photos. Sorry about that.

Yesterday I posted a blog with Jewelry I hung on a shrub.  All of a sudden I see a huge spider. Black and Yellow. A Writing Spider.  Right away my thoughts jumped back to when I was a young girl because that was the first and only time I had seen a spider like this until now.

I was staying with my Grandfather and his wife.  They had a farm in upstate New York.  They raised chickens which by today’s standards were free range.  It was fun to watch Grandfather in the coops.  There was an entire process from chicken coops to boxed eggs.

His neighbors had cows. I learned how to milk a cow too.  Not as easy as it looks.  I had fallen on a cow paddy.  My dad said he would attach a little red wagon to the car for me to sit in for the ride home.  Not funny but I stunk.  It didn’t happen. They did give me different clothes.

In the back field, cow corn was grown. This is really pretty multi color corn. I went into the field to pick some. I looked up and froze. There was this huge black and yellow spider. Once I recovered, I ran like the wind back to the farmhouse.

I told my grandfather.  He said it’s a writing spider.  If it saw you, it wrote your name in its web.  I didn’t want my name in a web. I was scared.  He seemed to enjoy this.  I never went back to see if it really did write my name.

I had forgotten all this until yesterday.

I took my camera and shot these photographs. I feel very brave that I was able to do this.  This spider is at least 4 inches long. The web is pretty amazing too.

My sister says I should get inspiration and use the colors for a necklace.  I don’t think so.  Fascination overcame most of the fear.

I hope you enjoy the Photographs.   It took a lot of guts on my part to take them.