She’s about an inch and a half long, and I haven’t seen her or her kind in the garden for several years. If truth be told, she saw me first. I was deep between two rows of tomatoes, bent over to cut the stem on an heirloom tomato about the size of a loaf of bread, when I caught a yellow blur at the edge of my field of vision. Her web was about 2 feet in diameter, and she was at the center of it, vibrating it like a fiend having a fit on a miniature trampoline. It was a move designed to scare me, and it worked. I jumped, tangling a couple of her guy-wires in my glasses, stumbling backwards, heart on the verge of failure until I recognized her and her tribe as one of our dear garden girl-friends.
She’s a Black and Yellow Argiope. Welcome back, sweetie. (Click photo to enlarge)
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Enjoyed this little vignette, particularly the line about the trampoline. Nice photo as well—though there are spiders in Japan that would put that girl to shame.