Joro overlords

In recent weeks, my home has been completely taken over by Joro spiders.  I'd never seen one before until a few weeks ago, and now they're everywhere.

I've been reluctant to knock down their webs, and I'll tell you why.  For one, they're a novelty in this part of the world, and I'm a curious cat.  For another, they spin yellow silk that shines like gold in the sunlight, and I think that's pretty cool.  Thirdly, they eat a bunch of insects.  The webs are littered with their trophies.  I think maybe the native insects don't "see" the webs as well as they see the webs of native spiders.  Whatever the reason, the Joros are absolutely slaughtering the bugs on an industrial scale, and that's a good thing.

The creepy part is that there's so many of them right next to the house.  The native spiders have never behaved like this.  It truly feels like an invasion, a conquest.  The Joros are our new overlords whether we like it or not.

Now if we could just teach them to eat yellow jackets...

Rough week

I've been sick this week and have had headaches pretty much all week.  I think it started Monday afternoon when I was bitten on the thumb by a mosquito.  A few hours later, I started to feel achy and weird.  My guess is that the mosquito gave a bug of some sort.  Who knows.

In any event, this week hasn't been fun, but I'm starting to get back to normal, I think.  I did some pushups today, the first exercising I've done all week.  My stomach's still not quite sure if it wants to digest food or not, but it's coming around.

I'm looking forward to colder weather.  When I get sick, I have a hard time dealing with heat.  I can deal with the cold better.  I wasn't always like this.  I used to be able to deal with heat better than cold.  But I'm older and fatter now, so I guess this switch was inevitable.

The hummingbirds are absolutely swarming at the feeders, and I've really enjoyed watching them this summer.  There's at least a dozen of them, and maybe closer to two dozen; it's hard to estimate with any accuracy due to the fact that they're constantly on the move.  When I'm sick, I stay inside due to the heat, so watching the hummers is one of the few ways I can enjoy nature from inside.

I've made a dietary change in recent weeks, and I think I'm losing a little weight.  Very slowly, but it's happening.  Let's hope I'm right.

Take care, folks, and make preparations for a winter full of hardships, because I've got a bad feeling about it.