S'Mo Halloween Clean Up

Susan is going to hate this entry because it starts out with spiders. When I was removing the Halloween lights last night, I came across this very cool and fairly large spider. At least, it was a large spider for Spokane standards. It had built a web anchored to the lights, which meant I destroyed the web as I removed the lights.
While I dislike snakes and reptiles, I have long had a fascination with spiders. When I was a kid we had a boat on Coeur d'Alene lake and there were always very elaborate spider webs built in the eves of the marina roofs. I would tear them down and then watch the spider rebuild them. If you've never watched a spider spin a web, you are missing one of nature's great marvels.

I got these shots of the spider before I ruined the web. I got a jar and relocated the arachnid off the front porch. I had a similar sized spider take up residence last year and later realized that a spider in one spot creates a surprising amount of spider poo. I'll be having none of that this year and so far, she has not returned. I did a little on-line research and determined that this is probably an Araneus Diadematus, the common European Garden Spider. It is indiginous to this area as well as California and along the Canadian border. It's not poisonous or anything to get worked up over.

We have the remains of 11 Jack O'Lanterns to dispose of. I finally got them all in one place in the yard and then thought it made a nice picture. I didn't spend a lot of time arranging the stack but I think this looks pretty good.

Our remaining jobs to accomplish this evening were to get everything out to the Carriage House and properly stored. We have pulled that off beautifully. We got everything out there and stowed in an orderly fashion. In contrast to yesterday when it rained a third of an inch, it was a lovely sunny day today and perfect for hauling stuff to the Carriage House.

While we were hauling stuff, Franco stopped by. I basically told him we would be handling the rest of our clean up. He said he really needed the work and I said I really needed the money. These guys see us living in the big house on the park and assume we are rolling it cash. They don't know about my two jobs or the se7en jobs that Susan has.

I was going to throw out all the barren skeletons of candy bar boxes but then realized that they would make a lovely heat source. And for ten minutes, it was a lovely heat source. Then it was ashes. Now I have a fire place to clean.

If we want more heat, we're going to need to buy a lot more full size candy bars next year.