Webs, fog, dew, and sun

It feels like we are coming back to life. Yesterday the sun came out and stayed out all day. In the morning, we got outside and worked. Walt's feeling better, and he was careful not to injure himself again. My cold is mostly over.

We brought in the outdoor furniture, which required making room for it in the garage. I raked leaves one more time (but it won't be the last time of the season). Using concrete blocks, I built a little planter box on the south side of the house and transplanted some succulents into it so they can spend the winter in a relatively warm spot.

Then Walt hooked up the Kärcher pressure washer that Jean and Nick loaned us the last time they were here and blasted a year's worth of algae and moss off the side fence along the road and the low stone wall out back. We have been thinking about buying ourselves a pressure washer, and now we know it would be a great investment. I don't know why we've waited so long.

Earlier in the morning, I had taken Callie out for her morning walk in the vineyard. It was very foggy out there, and little drops of water were clinging to everything — wires, vines, leaves, and more. We were not alone, either. That was obvious. Everything was covered in spider webs. There must be many thousands of eight-legged creatures living along the mile-long gravel road that runs through the vineyard.

At first all the webs I saw were tangled strands wrapped willy-nilly around anything available. There were also long strands spanning two rows of vines. It was only out at the end of the road that I started to see big geometrical webs worthy of a Halloween decor. Some of the pictures I took are posted here.



Unless the sun is just coming up and there are drops of dew or rain on all these webs to make them sparkle in the horizontal light, you would never notice them as you walk by. Yesterday they were hard to miss. All the ones in these pictures are different webs except in one case (just above), where I am posting a web and then a closeup of its center.

Yesterday as sunny and mild. Today it's supposed to rain but the mild temperatures are not going to end. From tomorrow (Friday) through Monday, at least, the weather is supposed to be mostly sunny and fairly warm. We are lucky, that's for sure. We'll be able to re-energize ourselves in the sunlight as we continue getting the fall cleanup finished.