patty, when you attend social trips and musical evenings you keep yourself happier and healthier for approaching everything else you need to do. Next week I have a couple of social things to look forward to, a good break from the past few weeks. The next batch of shredding is records from the knee replacement surgeries; I'll keep just enough paper to offer information about who and when the surgeries were done, but the rest is clutter. As you note, the goal is to not burn out the shredder—these few sessions removed about 1.5" of paper, giving more room and lightening the weight of my bug-out file.

In the garden yesterday I encountered a very large unknown-to-me spider on the base of one of the okra plants that had been cut and pulled up last week, in the pile of stuff awaiting transport to the compost pile. Loaded onto the wheelbarrow, the spider traveled to the back and the big okra roots went flying over the back fence onto the rough wooded area that I use for brush (in order to make it less attractive to trespassers hiking through our yards along the creek.) I looked her up; she's a relative of the big Argiope that lived on the front porch all summer, and as big as this one was, she had to have spent months in the okra and I never saw her. Considering how many lizards and toads live in that area, she's either not good tasting or is adept and avoiding predators. I'll have to look for her progeny next year, since there are probably egg sacs in the area. Banded Argiope (Argiope trifasciata) has less striking coloring as the Yellow Garden Spider (A. aurantia) and is a bit creepy when first observed.