Hi.
Does anyone know what kind of spider this is?
(Update, 6:34 p.m.: Clock Work Orange of flickr says it is a garden spider. For Christ's sake! I feel like I should have known that. I also feel like it should have a much cooler name than that.) (Update, 9:11 p.m.: Katherine says it's also a black and yellow argiope; see comments.)
It's totally beautiful and has a cool zigzag web, but that's all I can tell you about it. It's in an inconvenient location since I have to work around it to pick the fruit and flick the stinkbugs off the tomato plants, but I figure that's also a prime location for a bug buffet, so I have not tried to discourage it from hanging out there. Sometimes I try to toss the bugs into the web just for kicks, but so far none have stuck.
It also has a friend. I don't know what the friend is doing but I think I'd better leave him or her alone too. Those are Sungold cherry tomatoes for scale.
Here's the full garden, a little leggy but fairly happy after 2.5 inches of rain and last weekend's application of that John Dromgoole plant crack.
Okra, beans, squash, probably all planted too late and too close together. Tough shit, guys, fight it out.
Also mint, thyme, marigolds, caterpillar-raped kale, onions, and a poorly located rhubarb on the perimeter.
Hundreds of blooms on the Meyer lemon tree this spring resulted in exactly four lemons, which are taking forever to mature. I hope I get at least one lemon off the tree.
Oh, and by the way, the rat ingress point has been banished, and the car is back in the shop after a terrifying ride home yesterday. Ok, "terrifying" is a gross overstatement, but doesn't that sound so much more dramatic than "annoying and slightly worrisome"?