118 Henry Street

We’re spider friendly at 118 Henry Street. Good thing because we have lots of ‘em. Two species seem to dominate, with two more species pretty common.

The most common, the funnel web spider, also known as the grass spider. There are small ones, 1/4” body size, to large ones, 1” body size. The big ones love to come inside when the weather changes in autumn. We don’t see them as much when we have cats in the house.

Not related to the Australian funnel web spiders

Next most frequently encountered is the common house spider. They tend to prefer the dark and there are bunches in the crawlspace.

We let her live there for a while to catch flies

Wolf spiders are pretty common in the yard. After we cut the long grass this year, DeShawn found a couple.

Impressive specimen from 2006

Unfortunately, black widow spiders are somewhat common at 118 Henry Street. We have killed 5 or 6 in the last 5 years. One was very unusual with markings on it’s back like this. None in the last year, cross our fingers.

For 2 years, we had orb spiders in the canna’s.

Birds eat them

We found a big moth outside the mudroom door one evening.

Polyphemus!

Big, big thanks to the Bug Guide, for all your “bug” identification needs.

As a run up to a couple of posts about the 118 Henry Street eco-milieu, we stumbled upon a glaring omission in the “Recommended Resources”. 

Rarely considered, old houses have old yards.  Each owner of an old house puts their stamp of “fashion” on the yard with flower beds, gardens, and general property maintenance. Analogous to the layers of change discovered in old house restoration, old yards have zones of change that mark their unique progression thru time.

During the first two years at 118 Henry Street, we were exposed to a variety of flowers, bushes, and trees that would never be found in the “modern” yard of a newer house. Besides trees over a hundred years old, there were also remnants of flower beds from the first owners. This flower beds produced beautiful flowers and plants at the most unusual times of the year.

The result of much research and dead ends was a wonderful book by Felder Rushing.

The penultimate guide to our yard

Every (this is the absolute “every” not the “mostly almost every”) plant in our yard, besides grass, is in this book; from the 200+ year old trees thru the 80+ year old bulbs, to the plants we put in last spring.

In addition to his encyclopedic knowledge, Felder writes with a very easy, very southern style that encourages garden diversity and values the beauty of imperfection,  serendipity, and wabi-sabi. With all the current “green” and “eco-fashion”, Felder speaks from generations of wisdom about making your garden/yard from what’s best for your climate, soil, and your time.

To quote Felder, concerning his philosophy of “slow gardening”:

“Slow gardening isn’t lazy or passive gardening – it actually involves doing more stuff, carefully selected to be productive without senseless, repetitive chores. By focusing on seasonal rhythms and local conditions, it helps the gardener get more from the garden while better appreciating how leisure time – and energy are spent. 

…it’s more about thinking ‘long haul’ and taking it easy. Life has lots of pressures – why include them in the garden?”