I’m back in the meadowy-field because, well, because of the Black and Yellow Garden Spiders and because of a brush fire on an extremely hot day last week.

Looking back toward our house, with our neighbors’ woods to the left and ours to the right, it looks as though the Goldenrod goes on forever. Actually, there’s some Meadowsweet and a few Steeplebushes, and some other flowers in the mix, and ferns including Sensitive and Marsh and Royal and Interrupted, and mosses galore. But right now it’s the Goldenrod and Spirea (Meadowsweet and Steeplebush) that are attracting the pollinators.

And since the beginning of August, the Black and Yellow Garden Spiders have made a return and as I slowly walk along the path my neighbor keeps mowed, I’ve been noticing more and more of them every day and wonder how many more I don’t see or are deeper in middle the field where I dare not venture . . . because I know there are Black and Yellow Garden Spiders in there.

One extremely hot afternoon last week, I noticed a few of the spiders hiding in the shade. I circled the field twice and then headed indoors to get out of the heat, rather like them. But before going in, I grabbed the SD card from my game camera.

A couple of hours later, actually about 5:30ish, I headed back out to relocate the game camera in our woods. My neighbor saw me and we waved before I disappeared.

Camera relocated, I decided to circle around the trail I’d created in our woods years ago because in the shade of the Pines and Hemlocks, and with a breeze, it was rather pleasant despite the temp being about 97˚.

I was almost to the power lines that cross both of our properties when she texted me: “Do you smell smoke?”

I sniffed and did not, which I told her.

“I’m really smelling it now,” she wrote a minute later.

“Oh boy,” I responded. “I’m just about to the power line. I’ll head home via the field.” Which meant I’d walk under the power lines toward her field, thinking that by walking north, I might be able to figure out where the smell was coming from.

And then I stepped out of the woods and onto the actual power line. “The minute I hit the powerline,” I wrote, “it is strong. Yikes.”

“I’m going to walk up the field,” she replied.

I could see haze toward the north and told her that.

And then, I heard a crackling sound near me that didn’t make sense.

The crackling was the fire.

“I see it,” I wrote. “It’s behind us Calk 911.” Yes, Calk cuze I was in a panic.

And if you look closely at the photo, you’ll see two spots of orange which were the flames.

“Behind where,” she asked because she had called 911, but she wasn’t sure where exactly I was.

And then in my panic I realized that I needed to call 911 and did so. “I’m on the phone with them,” I wrote. “Thank goodness you smelled it.”

Actually, we were both on the phone with the Dispatcher, who was incredibly calm as she asked me to describe what I could see. The fire was on land belonging to another abutter to our south and about thirty feet in from the power line. From where I stood, it was difficult to get a sense of how large it was, but no way was I going in there to give a more accurate account.

Thankfully, the cool, calm, and collected Dispatcher asked me the best way to the location, which she knew via e911, and for which I am grateful, and the fire department was in the midst of their weekly meeting, so within minutes, with the Dispatcher still on the line, I heard the sirens and ran to the field to meet them.

Because the power line is also part of the snowmobile trail, the trucks could follow the path up through the field, and then cross over and drive between the breaks in the two stonewalls that define our boundaries.

Once they were at the location, I ran down the field trail to meet my neighbors and My Guy.

A little while later, three of us decided to head up and take a peek from our land on the other side of the power line.

Ten men and one woman were in there spraying the area with foam and cutting trees, many of which I think were snags or broken from snow weight as they were Gray and Paper Birch.

Another firefighter sent a drone up to check the entire area. He also saw the haze to the north that I’d seen at first, and sent the drone that way, but thankfully found nothing.

They came back the next day to try to determine the cause, but we haven’t heard what it might have been, which is disconcerting because given how dry and crisp everything is right now, I live in fear of this happening again. (We hiked a local mountain today and the top is crisp and dry and fall foliage will not be so great this year because everything is brown)

This morning I was checking on my spider friends and others in the field and My Guy, who had been on an errand, found me out there and asked if I wanted to show him where the fire had been since he’d had to go back to his store when it actually was happening.

He didn’t realize how big of an area it was, probably 30 or 40 feet by 20, and the potential danger it could have caused if my neighbor hadn’t smelled the smoke and she and I hadn’t gone looking for the source.

But I’m trying not to focus on that and instead spend my time observing all that happens just over the stone wall from our house. Check out the size of that pollen sac!

And look at the hairy scales on this dainty Common Ringlet butterfly.

Though I occasionally meet a Katy-did around here, I think this past week was the first time I’d encountered a Broad-tipped Conehead! What a conehead it is!

There have been a variety of dragonflies over the course of the summer, and just this morning it was this male Twelve-spotted Skimmer who stopped by. Each evening, there are a bunch of Darners, but they won’t slow down enough for me to make a positive ID. I do positively give thanks for them because all are helping to keep the Gnat and Mosquito populations low. Of course, they also eat some of my other favorites, but I remind myself that that is nature at work.

I did worry that as the fire trucks were driving up through the field last week, especially when they cut across to get to my location, they were destroying the spider webs. And they probably did. But what they were doing was way more important in that moment. And . . . the spiders have found some new locations in the spaces where the tires flattened plants.

It seems every summer I learn something new from these spiders, and this year I’ve had some time to watch them wrapping their prey on more than one occasion. I’ve also watched as one Bumbler somehow managed to bounce off the web . . . one strand at a time, and fly off. But not all are successful and the spiders need to eat too.

Though they occasionally eat the pollinators, they also help keep the population of some not-so-beneficial insects down, such as this Oriental Beetle. It’s warp-speed work when an unsuspecting guest visits the web.

Silk flows from the spinneret and the victim is quickly wrapped up as the spider turns it over . . .

and over again.

Click on the arrow and you can watch this ten-second video of the action.

Their meals come in all shapes and sizes and there are plenty of grasshoppers to meet the spiders’ feeding needs.

What I found curious is that not everything gets wrapped in quite a neat package, and I’m not sure why . . . yet.

I also had the chance to watch as a meal package was moved from a lower part of the web.

And brought up to the central station, which is a rather cobweby creation in the center of the orb.

And then the spider went into its traditional upside-down manner in this home base as it continued to wrap the captured insect.

As I draw this blog post to a close, I want to note that most of the spiders (at least a dozen on any given day) I spot are located in an East/West orientation, their upper dorsal carapace or their underside facing in these directions.

And even when a Black and Yellow Garden Spider abandons a web site, the drag lines remain, for such is their strength.

Those drag lines are super thick and if we were to walk through them, heaven forbid, we’d bounce off of them. It’s an amazing wonder.

What happened to the resident spider of the web above? I don’t know. I did spot a male hanging out with the female a couple of weeks ago, so maybe they mated and were done. Or . . . she moved on to a different location.

At the end of the day and the end of the web and the end of this post, I will be forever in awe of these Black and Yellow Garden Spiders, and grateful for what they and all the insects teach me.

I am also incredibly grateful to my neighbors for their awe of the natural world as it plays out in our neighborhood. And for her nose! Which smelled that fire that could have set all of this aflame.

And I’m thankful for the calm woman at Dispatch and brave first responders who put out the brushfire on an extremely hot day.

My Flame for Black and Yellow Garden Spiders is best ignited by awe and not by real fire.