A couple of posts ago I was talking about the size of the webs we’ve been getting in the garden. The wife suggested I wet the webs to make them stand out more… so I tried it.
It wasn’t a raging success because the others were either invisible against their backgrounds or were so indistinct as to be invisible. The one that *did* stand out fairly clearly was the fat lady’s web just outside the front door.
I’m not sure how clear it actually is for you to see from such a small picture – but despite being amongst the smallest of the current webs, I thought it was quite impressive! The ‘lady’ herself was however quite un-impressed… especially by the spray… and since she looked quite disturbed by it all, I thought it prudent to leave well alone for now and see if I can get a decent photo of her later on if and when she descends into her web.
Strangely she isn’t as fat now as she had been. The wife thinks maybe she was filled up with eggs previously and is now just biding her time until they hatch out… possibly to devour her as their first square (round?) meal? It happens. 😦
By the way, in the background on the left is the small bay tree we bought last year. It’s just starting to throw off side shoots which I hope one day to be able to prune into a topiary ball. On the right is the Monstera plant the wife grew from seed. It has three fruits on it and she’s hanging out to be able to pick them. They take ages to mature enough to eat and even then only produce edible sections a few at a time. In order to get enough to make a ‘meal’ she needs three or more ripening together… so we’re hopeful! We found a few in Hyde Park a few weeks ago and she’s slowly worked her way through those.
The flavour? Well it isn’t called the fruit salad plant for nothing! It actually tastes a little like banana, pineapple and peaches… all at the same time. If you eat it unripe you get that ‘tingling’ on the tongue you get when you eat unripe bananas… Wikipedia says it’s oxalic acid and I have no reason to doubt them.
I doubt the ‘fat lady’ would be interested in the plant… or the fruit for that matter, but *we* have to take *her* into account when we walk along the verandah… just in case. 🙂
The Eclectic Interweb 