Hi all, Thanks Tom! Fawn and Rita, I'm with you both, nothing worse than a web in the face! I spend the next couple hours knocking invisible spiders off me and out of my air. I love these spiders but I love my hummers more :) So, if I see their webs anywhere near my hummingbird/butterfly plants I relocate the spider and take down the web. The webs are relegated to the woods, so far I have only seen the big old grasshoppers in the webs. Take care. Rhonda

I'd say that you have a nice brown widow spider there. They've become pretty common in some locations. Look for their messy, disorganized webs and very distinctive egg sacs. I have both black and brown widows in my garage upon occasion; I'd be overrun with them if we didn't do major cleanings and vacuuming pretty often. I also dust the nooks and crannies with horticultural grade diotomaceous earth.

Last year I had some on the siding next to the garage. Caught a ton of bugs. The carcasses left stains on the siding. This year, I took a pressure washer to the stains. They were really hard to remove, so I took a closer look at them. The stains were blood from mosquitoes.

Oh, Sheila! No bravery required! These spiders are good guys. Several neighbors met out on the Lane last evening, and one of the topics under discussion was how many Orb Weavers each of us had -- along with how lovely the webs are in the early morning, when they may be sparkling with dew. ALAS! We had a tiny bit of rain last night, and this web is almost all dissolved. I hope the architect returns and starts over.