Household wildlife--Spider

Found this guy coming down from my bedroom ceiling light-fan. Other than indicating I really need to dust up there, I was rather pleased to see it. Hey, something to identify! Unfortunately, while I was able to catch it, I was unable to get a good picture of it. My preferred camera took pics while it was hanging and couldn't zoom in enough to get it from the right angle, then the battery died; the second camera sucks at close ups and I couldn't get a good photo. These are the only ones I was able to get, and unfortunately the best one is from below. Makes it harder to identify. Oh well, I'll probably find another one and be better prepared to identify it, then release it.

Garden Cleared

My dad cleared the garden plots of the winter vegetables today. This means we're now moving along with planting the garden for the summer. As you can see, the ground still needs to be turned over, and there are a few plants left in the right plot, such as the cabbages.

This year we'll be paring the number of vegetables and fruits down from what we had last year. We're doing this because we had too many plants in the plots, and way too many vine and crawling plants that a number of plants got crowded out. We had in the old garden:

• Collards (could only get one harvest before the bugs got to them)
• Tomatoes
• White eggplants
• Okra
• Melons
• Watermelons
• Squash
• Cucumbers

 That includes three vine plants, and two--melons and cucumbers--were very close to each other, and got very crowded and overlapped. The eggplants didn't work, and the squash were crowded out by the water melons and tomatoes. This year, we're limiting it to two vine plants, the melons and the watermelons, because they turned out so well. We're keeping the tomatoes, and probably doing a couple more plants. My father says he'll turn the soil over in a couple of days, and the plants will probably be put in the upcoming weekend. I'll tell you the final plants we'll be raising then.