The End of the Garden

So I finally got around to digging over my garden. I put a lot of work into my garden over the year but only managed to harvest some lettuce, one zucchini and lots of tomatoes. So, I obviously put the tomatoes in a better location (last year I think I only got one or two).

I put compost all over after, hoping to improve the soil quality. I've added fertilizer and top soil already - digging it in in the spring so the plants have more of a chance to survive. Still, it's a lot of work and I'm starting to think that if my yields are as small next year I might give up and just go to the farmers market more often during the summer. It worked this year.

Spiders

I hate spiders. Always have. Seeing Arachnophobia as a kid didn't help. I can kill spiders. I lived alone long enough that I had no choice but to 'man up' and deal with them myself when they invaded my apartments (especially the basement I lived in for 1 1/2 years).

I find myself in a truce with a spider at the moment. It's big (about 1 inch across, including the legs). It's pretty scary looking. And it's living on my tomato plants.

It hides behind a leaf, waiting for something to fly or crawl onto it's rather large web. I removed a few other spiders from my garden, but for some reason I've left this one alone. Maybe because it's huge and all I can picture is it jumping on my face as I try to whip it away with a stick. Maybe I know that if I do remove it another spider's going to find that sweet spot in a day or so so I might as well stick with this one and be done with it. It has kept a lot of the bugs away, which is good so long as those bugs aren't the ones I need for pollinating my plants.

Maybe when the growing season's officially over I'll ask my husband to get rid of it for me...