Garden Spider - Black and Yellow Argiope (Argiope aurantia)

Garden Spider; Black and Yellow Argiope (Argiope aurantia) Click for a larger view

At this time in the seasons the garden spiders; Black and Yellow Argiope (Argiope aurantia) make their appearance. The Black and Yellow Argiope is a common orb web spider; they produce a web circular in nature. The females are larger than the males and I tried to photograph a male but the images were of too poor a quality to post; I really do need to get a new camera. Females can reach a length of almost 3.8 cm (1 1/5 inches) while the males grow about 1.9 cm (3/4 inch) long.

I don't mind spiders in the gardens as they do a job in keeping down insect pests. However, these large spiders with their large webs might prove a hazard to the hummingbirds. Therefore, I will move this spider out of the phloxes to a place where I don't have to worry about a hummingbird becoming trapped in the web.

The gardens are suffering from the drought and it is a chore to keep them watered. The ground is baking out hard as a brick and I was hoping that I would get some rain today with all the heavy thunderstorms around me. I turned on the sprinkler in the back veggie garden and found that the sprinkler head would not spin around. I disconnected the hose and took the whole thing to the shed so I could see what was wrong with it. The sprinkler head was binding so I dissembled it, cleaned and lubricated the parts, and reassembled the head and mounted it back to the tripod. When I connected it to the hose and turned on the water it was spinning around like a new one. When my sister's sprinkler quit on her, she took it to her husband for repair. However, even if I had a husband I think I like the idea of being able to repair things on my own.