Spider Season

Water droplets illuminate this web in my garden

I am terrified of spiders, which is really inconvenient as I'm a gardener.  I've worked hard on overcoming this fear, and I don't freak out about them quite like I used to, but still, spiders give me the heebie-jeebies.

Rationally, I know they aren't going to wrap me in their webs and suck my blood, but still, I feel that they would if they could.  And I know it's completely irrational to be afraid of something that is so much smaller than I am.  But then again, these types of fears are rarely rational.

I do OK with spiders in the spring time.  They just aren't as "in your face" as they are right now and they seem to be smaller. Throughout the spring and summer, we get along fine.  At least outside.  Spiders in the house, or heaven forbid, on my clothes or bedding, literally make me shriek and call for help. But outside, I see them as part of the whole garden and I politely work around them.

Come August and September, the spiders get bigger and build their webs seemingly overnight.  And frequently they hang their webs right outside my front door, between paths, on my car--pretty much every place where I run right into them! Each year, I have to mentally work myself into this spider season. I remind myself of the good they do and their right to spin webs where they like, even as I shudder and shriek when I walk into one of their webs.

The ironic part of my spider fear is that even though they absolutely terrify me, I actually don't like to hurt them.  The truth is that I'm strangely fascinated by them.  I watch them weave their webs, and wonder at how they seem to know exactly how long to make each strand of web before connecting it to the whole piece.  Their webs are nearly perfectly symmetrical.  An engineering marvel.  And of course the gardener part of me is thankful to them for the work they do.  I am happy they eat their way through annoying flies with their delicate but strong traps.

But until this spider season is over, I will continue to walk around the garden with my hands in front of my face, shrieking if I end up with a spider on my shoulder.   And, entranced by the beauty of a web lit up with rain droplets.