What the Grandmother Spider Knows

I went out to work in the garden yesterday, in the far corner I've been so far avoiding because it's hard to get to. 

When I first moved in April, daffodils were blooming and the peonies, irises, and day lilies had all come up. The flower bed had become a green paradise since the end of winter, and the snowfall that beckoned as I considered the purchase. I really didn't see what was under the snow when I made my offer.

In many ways, the garden has been a cascade of surprises. 

There are some little tufts of green with pink blossoms. I don't know what they are, but they're pretty, and they look nice with everything else. As I've been cultivating the garden, I've been working with what is, and creating something that brings in what once was, to bring about something that will be. 

I love growing herbs and decided to grow them in pots because the flower bed is small. So, in and amongst the ground plantings are herbs in containers. I've filled in the spaces around all that with some other plantings of annuals and perennials. Containers hang from the fence with a profusion of colorful annuals, and morning glories that I'm growing from seed. There may yet be moonflowers as well. 

I'd thought about putting coneflower in that wild corner, but it seems to have been claimed by a spider and her web. 

What is it that the grandmother spider knows?

The message seems to be something around when and where to stop and also something about the snare.

As I was writing this morning, the doorbell rang. A neighbor wanted to let me know that someone had smashed one of the windows on my car. It's now evening, nearly bed time, and I am just getting back to this writing. There was the call to the police, meeting the responding officer, and the detective. There was reporting the claim to my insurance company, driving the car over to the collision center, touching base with the adjuster, and receiving the rental car. It turns out that someone had tried to steal the car. They crawled in through the back window, wrenched off the cover of the steering column, messed around in there, rifled the nooks and crannies in the front of the car, and stole my auto manuals.

It was as if the day said, 

This far and no farther.

I'd been snared by a web and held fast as the day was consumed.

I confess that I'm still in shock a bit. An attempted theft of my car and the actual theft of one of my precious hundred summer days leaves me pondering the same question from this morning differently.

Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.