Speaking to Spiders

Spiders were once sea creatures, climbing onto land about 100 million years ago and teaching themselves how to hunt very efficiently by spinning webs and then sitting and waiting, and they've since mastered the art. These elegant creatures have three separate spinneret nozzles in their abdomens: one for spinning non-sticky "framing" thread for their webs; one for sticky thread that catches their prey; and one that's a safety or parachuting line.

These threads -- for their size, strong as steel -- are made of protein and water. A spider needs both protein and water to keep spinning, and when necessary will eat its own web to build up energy for a new one. The orange-red artist in my photo lives on the corner of my garage where my car's headlights every evening give a minute of light while I get out of the car and raise the garage door. The first night I saw the illuminated web, the spider fled to a dark corner. I said "Don't worry. I won't hurt you." It took me at my word and now we are partners. I provide light by night that attracts moths and things into the spider's web.

The daddy long legs spider -- always close to the house because it likes water -- a year ago fell in love with a scrub brush that I left outside, and they had something in common, but this year it has the hots for half a geode, unfortunately destined to be unrequited love, but I said nothing, figuring it should be allowed to enjoy its fantasy world. I wished it much happiness, and went indoors back into my web and my fantasy world.

Do You Know Reddy Kilowatt?

One Girl Scout field trip was to the electric utility company's Home Ec demonstration kitchen with electric stoves, which we had never seen, and we practiced cooking on them, back when they WANTED people to use up electrical energy.

The electric company 's mascot was a figure made of lighting bolts with a bulbous head, a light-bulb nose and electric-socket ears, named Reddy Kilowatt, and it gave out Reddy-themed potholders and lapel pins, and electric bills had his picture on them, but after the energy shortage of 1973-74 -- the winter that, to save energy, we walked to school in the mornings with the stars still overhead -- saw him rarely, and now Reddy Kilowatt items are collectible. My sister and bro-in-law in Wisconsin collected two nostalgic Reddy potholders for me. Flummoxed because they had no tabs to hang them, I left them in a drawer for years before realizing they contained magnets for sticking them on the fridge. I now use them frequently. Here they are assisting me, saying "Be modern, cook electrically," on the propane stove with a pan of lavender shortbread.

Although Reddy looks to me now as if he suffers from terrible arthritis, I am fond of him. He was designed in the 1920s, to be consumer-friendly when farmers hemmed and hawed about buying electricity because they'd gotten along for 10,000 years without it. As I moved around the country I met people who had never heard of Reddy Kilowatt, and at times felt very alone, the way you feel when no one around you shares your archaic memories.

Then one day I had at the Divine Cabin a guest, born in Missouri in 1947. He saw my potholders and said, "Oh, Reddy Kilowatt," and I almost threw myself at his feet and begged him to marry me.

Animals Know What's Best

All animals know and go for the best part of anything: Here's a daddy long legs enthroned and lounging in the most elegant and fragrant of palaces, the crown of my basil plant, not caring if the plant is not native and scrawny because, I think, I transplanted the young plant into too big a pot, hoping for a big lush green bushy grant of basil. But I love it anyway and am glad a creature has found and appreciates it and feels safe there; there are not enough leaves on the plant for the spider to worry about the risk of becoming pesto.

A young cedar plant, being invasive, picks the choicest spot for its growth an inch in front of a healthy deciduous tree, such as an oak, with the goal of overshadowing it and appropriating all its nutrients, not caring that it's being rude and the other tree was there first; it's just nature.

I was taught to expect or take second-best and leave the absolute best for somebody else -- let them have the best bedroom, best part of the chicken, or shower first and get the hot water, etc. So glad I live where wild animals are teaching me the proper attitude, and there's no pressure to compromise.

Happy Labor Day!