Yesterday, mist hung heavy as I slogged across squishy wet ground and into the garden. There droplets hung together like a jeweled necklace on the underside of the stem of a tithonia, the bright-orange Mexican sunflower. On the adjacent flower, tiny droplets danced on another spiral web. “Spider web season!” I exclaimed to myself in awe of the beauty before me.
Then I noticed two small spiral webs moving gently in the cherry tree. A large black and yellow spider hung upside down in a web three feet in diameter just at the entrance to the garden. Mesh webs filled the grasses, weeds and sorrel next to the garden path. All were clearly visible as droplets of water hung to each strand.
This year has been a season of intense weather, abrupt shifts and puzzling riddles. I sweat through weeks of hot, humid weather in August. Sometimes the weather report called for rain and none came. Other days, rain fell when none was forecast. Temperatures seemed to deviate from the forecast by five degrees on any one day. Last weekend, the temperatures dropped 30 degrees. We had more drenching rain. On Sunday, Teeter Road closed as more water swept around the bridge over Pipe Creek than I had ever seen. The lower lawn became a giant pool. I cleared the trenches between the raised beds of weeds and soil so the water could drain from the garden.
We had no honey bees in the garden until August. One day, as my assistant and I walked toward the house, she stopped, her face alight. “Listen!” she said. We heard the soft hum of honey bees feeding on a pearl vine, a wild invasive weed that bees love. The sound softened us like gentle rain on parched earth. The beekeeper said he brought hives in June. Where had they been?
The next week, the Monarch butterflies arrived. Our spirits lifted as these light-bearers fluttered and flitted above the zinnias. Some did a spiral courting dance; others flew, one butterfly attached upside down to the other. Neither of us had ever seen that before. I learned later that the Monarchs were mating. Then dragonflies appeared. Two days later, they were gone. I had not remembered a dragonfly season. Was there really such a thing? Why had it ended so early?
Late last week, I nearly walked into a spider's strand that stretched from the peach tree to the lilac—some ten feet at my face level. Another one, spun lower, stretched from the mulberry to the blackberry. How had these spiders managed to string such long lines? What were they doing? Why?
I remembered stories of Grandmother Spider.”When the Universe was still so dark that not even shadows could be seen in the light, Grandmother Spider sat in her web in the Sky World, waiting and watching.”(Taino Ti) Then she began weaving, weaving the threads of connection with all life.
A friend in Elkridge, a fellow farmer, has also struggled with the difficult season. Several weeks ago, she saw Monarch butterflies in her garden, more than ever before. She felt buoyed to be one stop on their long migration. Another friend watches a pumpkin grow and marvels at the power in a pumpkin seed. A third friend came this morning to help me pull leeks and carrots from the ground so they would not rot in the coming storms.
Now, as an intense hurricane approaches the East Coast, we too can spin threads of connection—among ourselves and with nature. We can marvel at some small thread of nature that is holding, just as we can hold an image of wholeness in a world that is shifting so quickly. Spider Web season is here! Grandmother Spider is weaving. So can we.