Week 8: spider web, daddy long legs, and 3 confessions–

I’ve stopped writing my journal entries in the Crum because when I sit still for too long, I get bitten by mosquitoes. On my hands. On my face.

after my photo session for "clovers."

So I’ve switched over to the non-organic ways of the computer.

On Saturday, after attending Betsy’s and Eric’s lecture/presentation on digital storytelling, I decided to trail along on the Crum tour offered for the Garnet weekend visitors. When the group got to the fire pit area, I departed from the tour and began to take pictures of things that interested me. Then I found some clover patches, so I began to photograph them, thinking I should start preparing the visuals for my next project.

On my way out of the woods, as I was taking my last few clover pictures, I saw a spider web. Looking closely, I saw the little tiny spider sitting at the center of the web. Then–confession #1–curious and mean, I decided to blow on the web to see how to spider would react. I know–it’s really not nice of me to do so. But I was really captivated by how it responded to my attack–it dropped way below the perimeter of the web, then pulled itself back through a silk thread, like a little elevator. So cool. So, of course, being evil, I blew on it two more times–and each time, it responded the same way. I decided to sit back and observe it. For a good minute or so, it just sat in the middle of its web, still and inactive.

Then I realized that it had begun to destroy parts of its own web–combing the strands back into itself (or somewhere else–but it was so tiny, I couldn’t see where the strands went). Can you see the undone parts of the web in the second picture? I think it began to weave new strands again, but it stopped to rest; I was late for dinner, so I had to leave it behind. I’m not sure if my blowing attacks had destroyed some parts of the web, or if the spider decided to set camp elsewhere due to my vicious presence–or if it was just a perfectionist who decided that it needed a better web.

On Sunday, I woke up late and missed the Crum Regatta. (I’ve never seen it.) Having gotten to the entrance to the Crum at 10:47am, I saw people walking out from the direction of the creek and knew that I had no chance in catching a bit of the spectacle. Nevertheless, I decided to go into the Crum anyway, to take a walk and some pictures. As the crowd from the Regatta filtered out, I walked a little ways in the direction Betsy had first taken us on our class tour. Stooping to the ground, my eyes searched for clovers–and caught sight of something moving in my peripheral vision:

Once again I was fascinated by its movement–how graceful and deliberate each of its legs was in carrying the central body forward, like walking on stalks. It was both beautiful and humorous. Confession #2: yes, I disturbed the poor thing again. I’m quite the villain, am I not? Prodding it slightly with a wooden stick, I tried to make it move to a more lightly-colored area to provide contrast for photo-taking. No luck, though–it would take a few steps then stop, conveniently placing itself on the underside of the log so that I couldn’t take a better shot of it. In the next few minutes of trying to get close to it while it ran away from me, I located another daddy long legs right next to it, which promptly disappeared from sight after I approached it with my camera.

So.

My third and final confession: I didn’t actually know what clover was until about 2 hours ago, after fervent Googling and Wikipediaing. I thought I knew. But I didn’t. What I’ve learned is that this is clover:

But thanks to the iconic “shamrock” decorations of St. Patrick’s Day, I now have many, many pictures of this:

Wood sorrel. I haven’t seen flowers around these patches yet, so I don’t know which specific type it is.

[Sigh.] I don’t know how this next project is going to come out…

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