The Shed

 Dear Reader,

I took this information from the Daily Telegraph as I thought it was interesting and hope you do too.

"You may have noticed spiders scuttling across your floor or dropping from the ceilings, fangs glistening, hairy legs outstretched, all eight of them.  If they are not in your house yet, they soon will be.  They are coming, and this year, according to reports, some are as big as rats.    It is spider season.

Late August and early autumn mark the start of the spider mating season when millions of sex-crazed male spiders look for mates and end up indoors.

Meg Skinner, a spider expert, says spiders are around our gardens all year round but now we are seeing a lot more spiders in homes.  They are bigger and tend to wander round rather than hide in corners.  This is because the ones that we encounter are usually males looking for females to mate with.  The females generally stay in one spot in the corner.  But the idea that spiders enter our homes for warmth is a myth.  Spiders don't like heat they prefer cooler, damp conditions.

There is no good reason to be afraid of spiders.  The vast majority of the world's spiders are harmless and there are no dangerous spiders in the United Kingdom."

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From Dorothy Wordsworth   October 2nd 1800 in Westmorland

'A very rainy morning.   We walked after dinner to observe the torrents....the lichens are now coming out afresh, I carried home a collection in the afternoon.   We had a pleasant conversation about the manners of the rich - avarice, inordinate desires, and the effeminacy, unnaturalness, and the  unworthy objects of education ... a showery evening.   The moonlight lay upon the hills like snow.'

From Gerard Manley Hopkins   October 5th 1872 in Lancashire

'A goldencrested wren had got into my room at night and circled round dazzled by the gaslight on the white ceiling; when caught even and put out it would come in again.   Ruffling the crest which is mounted over the crown and eyes like bettlebrows, I smoothed and fingered the little orange and yellow feathers which are hidden in it.  Next morning i found many of these about the room and enclosed them in a letter to Cyril (his brother) on his wedding day.'

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The Shed

 

 The spider let himself down

from a crack in the grimy rafters.

Time to spin another web,

catch flies, feed his children.

This old shed he loved

had housed his ancestors,

its essence was in his blood.

He knew well the aged wooden bench

laiden with hand-worn tools,

the swallow’s yearly nesting place,

the bee’s hum and buzz.

He knew of the warmth from the earth floor,

from the hurricane lamp, lit on dark evenings,

of the dusty windows facing north,

and he knew he could swing on the ash spokes

spliced to the wheel hung on the hook.

He knew too that the moonlight

cast quiet shadows on the pile of logs,

home to small scuttling creatures.

He knew that nearby in a bed of shavings,

an old dog slept.

This restful shed scented with lavender and tar,

was a timeless place.

 

Clearing, cleaning, scraping, peeling,

the old shed becomes new.

Much buzzing and humming

as computers move in, reference books,

filing cabinets, printers, blaring telephones,

glaring lights, and stress.

 

No quiet shadows now

in the bright new shed,

no cracks, no silence, and the spider.... dead.

 

 

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With very best wishes, Patricia