I am interested in your lantana cuttings both red and yellow. Please check my trade list to see if I have anything of interest to you and let me know. Thank you, Carol

When I went to check on her a few days ago, she was gone! The web is gone and so is the spider! Acording to what I have read she was supposed to lay her egg sac and then as the weather cools she becomes frail and usually dies about the time of the first hard frost. We did have some cool nights last week, cool enough to put blankets back on the bed, but we certainly have not had our first hard frost! That should happen sometime between 9/24 to 10/6. I know that the chances of her coming inside are slim; but I couldn't help but check all corners of the inside of the house the last few days! I can't see an egg sac, but she did build her web right next to a large Clematis montana Rubens, so lots of leaf coverage to hide in. As much as I want to tidy this bed and start building a cold-frame; I think I will work on other areas of the garden and wait until long after the first frost, so I know that spider is history! Kat

I have seen the baby spiders hatch out and fly off into the great big world. In spring, one a warm sunny day when their is a nice breeze blowing, if you are lucky, you can see them hatch out all at once. There are hundreds, if not thousands of t-tintsy spiders, hardly more than a speck of dust to the naked eye. They shoot out thousands of silken threads and ride off on them in the wind. Birds and frogs gobble them up, but some live and grow and the next year, in late summer you will see them again in your garden - giants by comparison. ogrose, I have quite literally, but certainly by accident, stuck my head into their webs while gardening many times. The spider just scoots over and waits for me to exit. Never had one become aggressive with me. My children used to love them, giving them names. They were greatly influenced by Charlotte's Web. I always taught them to be curious about Nature, but cautious. Look but don't touch. Study it, observe and learn from other creatures. Of course, they often DID touch. :)

Brigite, your glut of spiders won't persist. Spiders have their own natural predators and I would suspect that the population in your yard will normalize after awhile. I have a lot of spiders, too. I don't let them hang around in my outdoor living areas, though. Every so often, I do a sweep under patio furniture and doorways so that I can hang out or go outside without ending up with a spider or her webs all over me. Black widows are very common around here, another reason for the sweeps.