Spiders and Butterflies!

We went out to the back yard Saturday evening and picked a few things out of the garden. We took a couple cukes over to Denny and Linda's back deck and I had walked back to our yard (to wash our last non- rotten pumpkin we picked) and LAD was investigating D & L's swing set,
then finally came running thru to our yard and when he did he scattered a huge batch of Monarch butterflies that were apparently trying to roost in the trees and his activity appeared to stir them up (or at least that's when I noticed them!) So we stood around and watched the sky swirling with "beautiful butterflies". LAD was very excited. I had to go inside for the BIG camera, the Canon point and shoot just wasn't cutting it! I got a few nice shots, considering I had my white balance on preset and didn't realize it until later. It actually really saturated the colors, so it turned out OK. I'd never seen so many flittering about, it was quite fascinating!

And luckily I spotted this big fat spider and her (his?) big fancy web _before_ I walked thru it! I pointed it out to LAD and he came up and looked at it, then backed off. He was worried I was going to touch it as I was getting pretty close to it to take the pictures. No worries, I'm not going to touch it. I'm sure it's quite harmless, but still, no. I think spiders are the one crawly type critter I like least. Not afraid to see them, etc, just eullllll (uninteligible sound that can't be spelled). I think it stems from living with brown recluse spiders while growing up. They get into places (clothes, sheets, coats) that you don't want them to get and eullllllll. Can you say shake, shake, shake everything. Eulllllll....