Sophie and the Garden Spider

This is sort of 'off the beaten track of gardening" here .. but Gail from Clay and Limestone did a fantastic job posting about garden spiders and the good they do. She inspired me to look more closely at spiders in my own garden and there are lots of them. Which I think is a good sign and certainly helps me out with the bad bug population. This series of pictures was all on the spur of the moment in the front garden and with Sophie absolutely astonished with me crouching along to get a decent shot of one of the spiders (without getting tangled in webs upon webs there) No one wants to see a grown mature ? woman run screaming brushing her hair and body down like a demented idiot. I already do enough things like that as it is .. so hey .. the neighbors wouldn't think it was unusual at all now that I think of it ?

If you enlarge the picture and look at the brown spot at the top of Sophie's leg you can make the spider out, hanging in mid air .. minding its own business while I'm crashing through the peace and quiet of it world and at the same time entertaining Sophie if you will.

Mom ... what the heck are you doing out there ??????