I had thought it was going to be a fairly uneventful day, but then I went into the basement.

After a baking summer, the last few wet, rainy days had left the air humid and the ground saturated, so I decided to head down into the basement to dump the water in the dehumidifier.

The bulb had burned …

You could kind of say it was an old fashioned barn raising.

We wanted a barn critters would be happy in. Drawn to, even. Of the earth, and of nature.

So I recently found two interesting spiders in my yard, both of them fairly large. That, combined with seeing five praying mantises recently, and I’m beginning to wonder if there’s some strange mystical insect vortex centered on my house.

Here’s the first spider.