Spiders, it turns out, like daylilies, too. Black and yellow spiders, in particular, seek out gardens, and this beauty has taken up residence in the daylilies. Black and yellow spiders come to our attention mainly in August. They build webs with a reinforced section down the middle that looks like a zipper.
This one is a female, and she has created two large, brown egg sacs to hold hundreds of eggs.
She ate the guy that got her pregnant--I have a bad feeling he was the other black and yellow spider I found among the daylilies--and there are a lot of women who probably envy her. Like Charlotte, she will die sometime this fall. (Apart from Bambi's mother, is there a sadder scene in all of literature?) But her babies will live on and grace our gardens next year.