I know that there is a segment of the population that has certain prejudices towards the arachnid family, but this is not an ordinary spider. This is a special spider. This is a garden spider. And when I read the classic Charlotte’s Web, in my mind Charlotte is a garden spider. She had to be, because garden spiders are just like Charlotte. They are loyal and beautiful and make the most wondrous webs.

Garden spiders are also known as writing spiders, though their fancy schmancy name is Argiope aurantia.  They are called a writing spider because their webs always contain a strip of thickly woven web down the center that looks as though the spider was practicing her Zs.  This strip is called the stabilimentum.  The reason for this strip of web is uncertain, though it is theorized that it may be as a visual stop sign for birds to keep them from flying into the webs or to attract bugs to the web who might think it is a safe solid place to land.  I suppose the second theory might be true and if it is, you could kind of thing of that as nature’s way of cleaning out the stupid bugs as I am not sure why a bug would think a spot in the middle of a web would be any safer than the outside of the web.

You may have noticed that I keep referring to my garden spider as a she and you may have been asking how I know that it is a female. And perhaps a bizarre image of me sneaking up and lifting the spider’s skirts to check came to mind (and if it did not before, it comes to mind now, doesn’t it?), but no. I know she is a she because all garden spiders you see are likely to be female.  The females are huge, with bodies (not including the legs) that can be an inch or more in length. The males, on the other hand, are often only 1/2 of an inch or smaller.  The female of the species is a loyal homebody. Once she finds a place she likes, she builds a web and often stays there for the rest of her life.  While the males wander, looking for mates and a sex driven death, and rarely make webs. So, if you see a garden spider, A) it was big enough to see,  B) it likely is in a web and C) it is still alive – ergo, it is a female.

Garden spiders can be recognized by their distinctive black and yellow markings. And, for as scary as she may look, a garden spider is much like many spiders. If you don’t bother her, she won’t bother with you. Meaning, yes, they can bite, but only if you touch her first.

She lives about a year, but once a garden spider takes up residence in a spot, normally one of her children will replace her in that spot in subsequent years, so your garden will never be without her beauty again.

She is a tidy spider as well. Every evening she will take her web down and eat it and then will rebuild it the next day.  They also have a unique habit of bouncing their web if they feel the web is threatened. Again, it is not known why they do this, but it is thought that it may be a way for the spider to draw attention to itself, as in to say “My web is here, dumbass. Don’t be clumsy and knock down my home!”  I accidentally triggered this reaction while gently moving some weeds so I could show my neighbor the spider and it was odd to see.  It is like watching the spider suddenly turn her web into a big trampoline swing.

But my garden spider has nothing to fear from me.  I won’t knock down her web.  I have take steps to protect her, such as leaving the weed patch intact and forbidding my budding entomologist of a son from collecting her into one of his dozens of bug jars that are now scattered around my home.  Now instead, he sits watching her for hours on end (or emptying the contents of one of his bug jars onto her web), reminding me of myself when I was his age. It almost makes me want to run out and get a runty piglet to place back there as well.

But, even though I did not do much gardening this weekend because I was out of town, we did find an interesting visitor in the middle of the road near our home.  Yes, I said middle of the road. We found an Eastern Box Turtle sunning itself on the yellow line of a busy road. Apparently turtles and toddlers have the same level of desire when it comes to attempting to end their lives through potentially unsafe activities.   Due to the turtle’s obvious suicidal tendencies, it was brought back to our house for a 72 hours observation period and when it is found to no longer be a danger to itself or others, it will be released back into the wild.  In the meantime, she is serving as a small summer educational project for my kids.

The first thing they learned is that box turtles should not be permanently removed from the wild and when returned, they should be returned to the place they were removed from (though probably not the middle of the road). It turns out box turtles have little biological homing beacons that make it so they will try to get back home again.  So, if we don’t return her to where she lives, what we may accomplish is finding out exactly what happens when the old joke “why did the turtle cross the road?” gets interrupted by vehicular turtleslaughter  as she tries to cross the roads that stand between here and where we found her (though given this turtle’s propensity to find roads to be good sun beds, this could happen anyway).

Next, box turtles are omnivores. I kind of wish that we could convince her to stay here because of this.  They love to eat slugs and bugs and other baddies in the garden (though they like to eat earthworms too, but we all can’t be perfect). They will also eat fruit and veggies if they can find them.

And, I keep calling her SHE. How do I know that? Because she does not have red eyes. Male Eastern Box Turtles mostly have red eyes.

So, our little house guest will stay a day or so and then we will free her, but in the meantime, it was interesting to find out a little more about her.

The doctor had missed a very important detail. I was upside down. Babies ideally should be born head first and face down. The birth canal is designed to allow to slide a baby out when it is in this position.  I was head first but face up, so all that time I had been hitting my head on my mother’s pelvis bone (which probably explains a lot about me today). The doctor immediately grabbed a pair or forceps (which according to my mother were HUGE) and gently popped me loose.

The point of this story is that sometimes a baby needs a little help to get into this world safely and it is no different for baby plants.  Sometimes seedlings need a little extra TLC too to make it safely into our garden world.

As usual, I have planted several dozen cups of seedlings but this spring, I seem to have a pervasive issue among my seedlings and that is helmet head (which is very different from helmet hair, although aesthetically they look the same.) A high percentage of my seedlings this year have the seed coats stuck to the cotyledon leaves.

A quick search on the internet revealed a few different causes for this condition. Some people felt that the seeds had not been planted deep enough, others thought the seedlings had not been kept in high enough humidity, some people thought that this was caused by using old seeds while still others felt that this was a sign that the seedling was weak and should just be mercilessly thinned out.

In my case, I think the cause was a lack of humidity.  This year I decided to try using a radiator as a source of bottom heat and had set the seedlings on a frame over the radiator.  The seedlings came up quickly, but I do now wonder if the heat from the radiator dried out the air too much around them.

But whatever the reason, my little seedlings are in need of a little extra TLC. Interestingly enough, the most often suggested solution to this problem was spit. Apparently the enzymes in saliva help to break down the seed coat  and the sliminess of spit helps to lubricate it off.

Prior to learning this, I was gently pinching the seed coats and sliding them off.  It works well enough but occasionally I pinch too hard and end up crushing the poor little seedling, which creates my own personal “oh shit” moment. So, I will give the spit method a try.

Seedlings and babies all sometimes need a little extra care when making their way into the world. The trick is to pay attention to any potential problems, which saves everyone involved a whole lot of pain and labor.

My husband of (give or take) 10 years is from a skiing family.  I am not from a skiing family.  It is kind of like the snow version of Romeo & Juliet, without the yelling, fighting and suicide at the end. But, because my husband is from a skiing family, his dream vacation was to be able to ski “Out West” where they have REAL mountains. Here in Ohio, we have mole hills that they try to pass off as mountains and in New York, they have mountains that forgot to take their Rockies steroids. So, here we are, crossing one off the bucket list, in Whitefish, MT so my husband can ski Big Mountain. Apparently people in Montana are as good at naming things as gardeners are.

But, while I do not ski (never will ski, not gonna ski, yes, I know it’s fun but still not gonna ski), we choose this place because there were still lots of things that I could do, being a non-skier.  So one of those things I did the other day was to buy a walking lift ticket all the way to the top of Big Mountain.

It is a breathtaking view. On a clear day, you can see for miles – though good luck getting a clear day around here for as often as it snows, but even without full visibility it is still a stunning view.

But, it seems these mountains  are haunted by spirits with tenacious determination and solemn beauty. Snow Ghosts, as the locals call them, come to haunt the slopes every year as the winter progresses.

Snow ghosts are alpine tundra trees that have built up a coating of snow over the course of months of wind, snow and freezing weather. When you think about how often the plants near us die when it reaches just below freezing, it is pretty amazing how these trees survive.  Not only are these trees covered in snow and ice for months at a time, but in that picture they are standing in TEN FEET, yes TEN FEET of snow. Yes, that means in the summer, the trees in those pictures look 10 feet taller.  This is the kind of snow I shiver and hide from but these trees deal and move on.  Talk about fortitude…

So how come these alpine trees can survive this kind of weather – buried under 10 of snow and temperatures of up to -40 below zero? Because Mother Nature is the WOMAN, that’s why.  First, evergreen trees are a tenacious lot thanks to their leaves. Area space allows for evaporation.  Evaporation is the enemy of plants in the freezing temperatures  as they have a hard time taking up water that is frozen in the ground. If you need a self comparison, think about how well your skin deals with the winter weather.  Yeah, it’s like that but without the Burt’s Bees lotion to help us to get through it.

This is actually the reason why most plants lose their leaves.  Those broad pretty leaves make for lovely shade in the summer and a sure case of tree eczema and dehydration in the winter if those leaves were to stick around.  So many just drop them.  Pine  trees though are the beauty queens of winter. They have thin, slender leaves (needles) that have less surface area, so less evaporation in the dry winter air.

They also have a waxy covering on their leaves that further helps prevent drying from evaporation.

Second, the cone shape of the tree and the dense nature of their leaves and branches helps it better withstand the weight of that fabulously stylish and cuddly cold snow coat.   The sturdy center trunk stands tall when branching trees would snap and crack under the weight.

Third, pine trees have less water in their leaves, which means that there is less ice crystals.  Ice crystals are what often kills a plant as they pop the cell walls and all the water leaks out.

So, while these ghosts don’t go “woo-woo”, drag chains and really scare anybody (except for occasional skiers who lose control of their skis), they are spirits we have to admire for their clever adaptations in the face of seemingly impossible environment.  And for the record, still not gonna ski – mainly because I am fairly certain I will run into one of these trees. And while they may be called ghosts, they are in fact very, very solid.

But what is it that makes a garden ripened tomato taste so damn good. I mean, the tomatoes in the store have a tomato flavor (well, the ones that are sold as “vine-ripened”, anyway), but it seems pale and pathetic when I remember what the taste of a real tomato is like.  It is not that a store bought tomato is sweeter, or more sour, or more bitter.  It seems to be that they are just… less… a lot less.

It turns out that there is a reason for this and its name is umami. While that may sound like a game that sends children in movies to terrifying places and my children to bed with nightmares, it is not. It is in fact the secret life of your tongue and taste buds. That’s right, your tongue has been steppin’ out on you all these years and you didn’t even know it.  Well, not exactly, you were there.  You can kind of think of umami as the ménage trois (actually ménage cinq) in your food life.

We all grew up learning about the four basic food tastes – sweet, salty, bitter and sour.  These had been established since the days of the ancient Greeks when the philosopher Democritus decided (apparently on a whim) that there were 4 flavors. No more, no less and anybody who thought differently could go fly a toga.

But, if there is one thing we have learned over the past few decades is the big fancy medical and science ideas of the Western world can’t hold a dim candle to the mysteries solved by the Eastern world. (And if you don’t agree with that, than you explain who were the test guinea pigs for acupuncture.)

In not too ancient Japan (circa 1908), a chemistry professor named Kikunae Ikeda isolated a flavor he called Umami, which roughly translated to English means “really, really yummy” (no joke, it does mean “tastes really good”).  The compound he discovered was later patented as a flavor agent. The East embraced it. We here in the West said “What could a modern scientist figure out better with fancy smancy scientific thingies than old guy who made up the four flavors over 2000 years ago? We ain’t buying it.” (Hmm, funny how the tables turn).  The West got their asses handed to them when in 2000, a receptor for umami was identified.

Chances are if you have eaten Chinese food (and just about anything from a can), you have had that patented substance. It is called MSG. And no, despite the bad press it got a few decades back, it is not bad or dangerous. In fact, it is a naturally occurring substance. Glutamate (the G in MSG) appears in a lot of foods, including… drumroll… fully ripe tomatoes. That is what your grocery store tomato is missing, as they are not really truly ripe and therefore lack the richness and depth that umami brings to your garden grown tomato.

So, during these dark and dreary last days of winter, while you are pining for the flavor a real tomato, you now know who to thank. “Umami is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all tomato gardeners.”