Spiders Are My Friends

    I'm not the type to be afraid of spiders and I'm not the type to go around killing them. If it is not a black widow or a brown recluse then it is safe with me. When I lived in upstate New York, I never had to worry about anything poisonous. Living previously in Nevada and now living in Georgia is a totally different story. Poisonous snakes and spiders are going to be somewhere in the neighborhood. Luckily, I don't get to interact with them too often. If you are a black widow or a brown recluse and you show up in or around my house, I'm sorry but I am going to kill you. If you are another type of spider, welcome to my home!  I have insects and you eat them right? So let's work out a deal. I won't kill you and you kill them. Is that fair enough?
    Down in South Georgia we have some great and beautiful spiders. The jumping spiders are fascinating. There are thousand of species of these so I have no idea which ones I have seen. I thought I could catch them but they leap away from you at super speed. Once I saw one on the bathroom wall and a fly was on the wall nearby. The jumping spider seemed very still for moment and then instantly pounced onto the fly.

underside view

side view

    Size-wise these jumping spiders are nothing compared to one that is frequently seen in my area. This beautiful creature has a lovely yellow body with white spots and long legs that are brown and yellow striped. I thought at first that it was commonly known as a yellow garden spider or Argiope spider. Now that I have received a helpful comment from a friend, I have found that is called a banana spider (Nephila clavipes), which seems a very suitable name.  I am just assuming it's a girl and I call her Goldy. My aunt and uncle once had a golden retriever named Goldy and this spider is nearly big enough to put on a leash. This one I have seen attached to the outside of my house but more often I see it in the woods. One lovely girl has had her web set up across one of our nature paths for over a month. At first she shared the web with what I believe to have been  several small males who may have been rallying around her for some spider lovin'. One day they were just all gone. Did they go upon their merry way or did she eat them? They were a small fraction of her mammoth size and I am tempted to believe she is a man-eater.

top view

    The first time I saw the crab-like orb weaving spider I did a double take. It looks like it has little thorns sticking out of it and is also known as a spiny orb weaver. I couldn't believe it when I saw that it was a spider making a web. Last year one took up residence in the front yard for several months and became known to me as Charlotte, the most cliche name I could think of for a spider. Its web was suspended between the large evergreen in our front yard and the ground below. I would often watch it building its web. This year the ones I have seen stuck around only a few days. One had its sparse web precariously hanging between some high tree branches with one thread attached to the grass below during several windy days. Maybe it figured out this wasn't a good place because it soon disappeared.

    I recently made friends with a small spider that had taken up residence in a rather strange place. It was living in the crease on the top outside edge of my cats' pet food bag. I decided that one could stay too. I certainly don't want insects getting in the cat food. It would sit lurking in the shadows behind its web in between the crease of the bag just waiting to catch its unsuspecting victims.  My friend the spider was there for over a week until one day my husband thought he was doing me a favor by feeding the cats. I had shown him the spider before but he had forgotten about it and just picked up the cat food bag to dump onto their dishes. I, on the other hand always scoop the food from the bag by hand so as not to disturb my little friend. Since my husband forget about my new pet, it is now MIA. Hopefully it just set up a new location in my cats' room.
    Here's to you spiders, my natural pest control friends. Thanks for being there for me. You don't hurt me so I won't hurt you and I am always here to provide plenty of insect action in my home!

Using Every Part of My Produce Presents

    I had lots of jalapenos and habaneros, I needed to find ways to use them. I decided I had to make a hot chili out of those babies. One thing that I have learned over the years is never tell them what you are cooking. That way if something goes wrong and you have to make something else they won't think you are a bad cook. Or if it turns out to be something else by mistake they don't need to know that either. Years ago when my husband and I first got married I said I was going to make chili but it came out like soup. My husband didn't think it was very good chili, but if I had just served it and said "here's your soup" it would have been fine.
    So I intended to make chili but I really didn't have enough tomatoes to make it thick enough. I wanted to make it go farther so I made Hot Chili Soup in the crock pot instead. This is a vegetarian soup but in this case I cooked some ground beef in the microwave for my husband and he added it to his bowl. The soup was delicious, flavorful and spicy hot. We crumbled up lots of whole wheat saltines into it and topped it with a dollop each of nacho cheese sauce and a homemade sour cream-based onion dip.

    To use the fresh lemon I cut half of it up and put it in iced tea. The other half I used for a homemade salad dressing for some fresh garden greens that I grew in outside pots. No part of the produce went to waste.  I had hot peppers left over so some I chopped and added to an already hot vinegar that my husband had made and kept in the refrigerator. The others I chopped finely and placed on ceramic plates outside in the sun to dehydrate naturally for a few hours. In the evening I brought them inside and placed in the kitchen cupboard to dry for a few days. Now they are dried and  look like a beautiful green and yellow confetti. I will put this in a recycled container for a future chili or soup. Three separate ceramic plates hold the seeds from the lemon, jalapenos and habaneros and are sitting in a cupboard to dry. I always keep one kitchen cupboard open for drying things on plates. The seeds will be placed in labeled envelopes and be added to my seed box later. I am very excited to try planting the lemon seeds. The man who gave the lemon to my husband got 150 lemons off his tree last year. All of the scraps from the peppers and lemon went into the compost pile.
    One thing I will remember next time is that I need to wear latex gloves when chopping habaneros.With a Scoville Scale hotness factor of between 100,000 to 500,00 they can really burn. The jalapenos only rate at 2500 to 5000. The Scoville Scale ranges from a 0 to 1,000,000.  After working with the peppers for three days I am paying the price. While ringing out an ammonia soaked mop with rubber gloves my hands started burning because they had a leak in them. Later I did the dishes wearing gloves in very hot water. Afterwards they were throbbing and burning so bad that I took an ibuprofen. It even hurts my hands to shower! An injury from a habanero was not what I expected but I won't  make that mistake again. 

 Hot Chili Soup  
1 cup dried kidney beans
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cloves minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 finely chopped jalapenos
1 finely chopped habanero
1 1/4 cups salsa
1 14.5 oz can diced Italian tomatoes
1 10 oz can diced tomatoes with green chilis
     Since I wanted this ready in time for dinner but did not soak the beans overnight, I heated a bowl of water in the microwave with a lid on it until it was almost boiling. Then I soaked the kidney beans for about four hours. I drained, rinsed and put them in the crock pot covered with a few inches of water on high. After several hours I tested them to see if they were at the desired tenderness. Mine took about four hours. Once they were done I scooped out most of the water, leaving about a half inch covering the beans. I added the remaining ingredients and simmered for another hour. You can serve it with crumbled whole wheat saltines or tortilla chips and  a dollop of nacho cheese and sour cream dip.



Lemon Dressing
zest from 1/2 a lemon
juice from 1/2 a lemon
1 T white vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
   Mix it all up and pour on top of fresh salad greens. I like to use citrus pepper or lemon pepper in mine. To get the zest of the lemon, gently scrape it across the small part of a cheese grater. Top the salad with almonds if desired.

  

My Three Country Gifts

   One thing I have noticed since I have moved to Georgia is that people are always giving you fresh produce. Since we moved here we have gotten corn, watermelons, squash and more. The community garden I joined provided cucumbers, squashes, herbs and snap beans. Now that my husband goes to people's houses for his new job they give him things too. He came home the other day and told me had three things for me. One was a fresh lemon. I have never had a fresh lemon. Years ago we tried to grow a miniature citrus tree and the lemons got to be quarter size and fell off. The lemon  was still a little green on one side so I thought I was smart setting it in the sun to finish ripening. When I looked it up on line I discovered that once you pick lemons they don't ripen anymore. That's ok because I was determined to use it anyway.

     The second thing he gave me was a bag of jalapenos and habaneros. We love hot peppers so I had to figure out how I would use these too. I took a little sliver off the tips to see how hot they were. They tasted like green peppers. I told my husband they weren't hot at all which I could not understand. It turns out I just did not take enough of a sliver because I did not even get to the hot part. They definitely were hot.
    The last thing he gave me was a dead bee. Yes, I said a dead bee. My husband thought I would love a dead bee and he was absolutely right. I will add it to my insect collage that I am making. Insects are just so pretty it's a shame to let their dead bodies go to waste. But I will save that story of how I started an insect collage for another day. I'm glad my husband knows me well enough to know that I love the little things in life like insects and produce. I guess he did learn something after 16 years.
    

Back on the Country Side

   About a year ago my husband and I left Las Vegas after 10 years and moved to the small town of Climax, Georgia. People often ask me if I am bored here because there are so many things to do in that big city in Nevada. The answer is an adamant "no". I love it here. I grew up in the countryside, the daughter of a dairy farmer in upstate New York.  Now I feel can get back into the green side of me that loves growing things and enjoying the natural world. My husband grew up here and since we have returned to this area we have grown our own vegetables, picked wild blackberries and made our first homemade wine. I even joined a community garden.  We have two fig trees and a plum tree in the yard. Wildflowers dot the grass. We created nature trails in the woods on our property.  With the population in Climax at about 297 people and Las Vegas at about 583,756 people you might think I'd be bored as can be. But  I have made friends and joined groups in the nearby city of Bainbridge.  We traded in the night life for the country life. The city was fun while it lasted but now I'm back on the country side.