Argiope, Mame's

With the sun back out, but post-Labor-Day busy-ness back in the forecast, I didn't have a lot of time for trekking. However, I did manage one quick jaunt, this one across the street to check a favored spot for the presence of Black and Yellow Garden Spiders. Argiope aurantia—the namers favored gold over yellow—is the classic orb-weaver and crafts a beautiful, foot-wide web of silk with a decorative zig-zag element known as a stabilimentum in the center. Before the beloved field down the road was destroyed for "development," there was a stretch of shrubbery in which I could always find the conspicuous females of the species, but fortunately, I've been able to locate other good A. aurantia areas, one of which is in my neighbor's unmowed meadow. By early September, I figured that the females would finally be big enough to spot—the males are usually too tiny to notice, unless they're in the web area as they attempt to mate and avoid being eaten—and my recollection, based on records from previous years, was correct. Good for record keeping; good for the spiders, who are starting to prosper, despite the ongoing drought.