Autumn is when the spiders come out. Last October I got some nice photos of dew-spangled webs all over the yard. This year I walked out the back door and found this handsome fellow (in both senses!) stringing a web between two parts of the Rose de Recht, about 3 feet from the porch. I couldn’t resist a couple of shots:
Isn’t he elegant?
I don’t know why I like spiders so much, except that they’re so busy, always spinning; and then there are all the bugs they eat. I took as close a shot as I could; his (probably her, I suspect!) actual size, excluding legs, is about the length of my thumbnail!
Looks like it might be a female Garden or Cross spider (araneus diadematus). So named because they are common in gardens or for the white cross on the abdomen. Orb weavers. Good bug catchers.