Creepy Crawlys Give Me the Willies

Summer: a time of hot days, lots of sunshine, flowers in bloom, fun at the park, ice cream, and bugs.

Lots of bugs! Anyone who knows me knows how much I HATE creepy crawling things; anything with more than 4 legs. But alas summer = bugs. Most of the time I hate summer and see it as Mother Nature playing a cruel joke on me as I find spider after spider and creepy thing after crawly thing in my house, on my car, or in my mailbox.

Unlike last summer when Brandon and I were visited by probably the largest spider I have ever seen in real life (It was HUGE with a yellow zigzag on it's back; it's body alone was the size of Brandon's palm with a leg span that spread out much larger than this whole hand. When Brandon saw it even he jumped back and said: "WHOA!") this summer has had fewer spiders and more mosquitoes. With the humidity being so high we haven't spent as many night out on the back porch sipping lemonade as we would have liked and we've missed being able to watch the birds. We've been a little bummed by the lack of humming birds this year; last year there were SO many of them they were fighting one another to the death to get to the bird feeders. But that doesn't mean we haven't had our fair share of visitors of the creepy crawly variety. This summer, luckily, the abnormally large spider's friends have not come over for a visit; maybe the sight of their friend squashed on our back patio pavement last summer was deterrent enough.

We have been visited by 2 VERY prego wasps with a full nest of little babies; wasps are quite the vigorous little baby makers causing us to invest in plenty of RAID for the future. We caught sight of a gorgeous praying mantis, who was camera shy, and a beautiful dragon fly who seemed put out that the praying mantis was on his turf. The spiders have remained, for the most part, out my sight and are welcome to stay as long as they remain that way. I have yet to scream as I've come across anything and am proud to say I've even killed a few small spiders all by myself.

It's been a relaxing summer and I think that this summer Mother Nature and I have reached an understanding and are totally at peace. *(I'll post pictures later) We're ready for the trees to change and the weather to cool, but only when sweet Mother Nature is ready.

Now that I've posted this blog I hope I don't go home and find one of those spiders in my house...