Most of my books are in storage, including everything I have on insects and arachnids, so I wasn’t able to look up this tiny little chap that visited my garden today.  It landed on the handle of my chimenea, which was fortunately not lit at the time.  He/she was beautiful but even though I’m not scared of spiders, I wasn’t getting too close.  Even though it can’t have been much more than a centimetre or two long, it had attitude!  I don’t have a macro lens, and this was taken with a 28-300mm that happened to be on the camera, so the photo is a bit smudged.  Looking at the “Guide to Garden Spiders” (Field Studies Council) I think that it is almost certainly a comb-footed spider (Paidiscura pallens).

The frog under my bay tree.

Not much sun today but warm and dry.  Got quite a bit done.  The former gardener’s last strimming of the grass resulted in a hayfield and I could bear it no longer so found a fan-rake in the garage and raked it and all the fallen leaves into piles ready for placing in my garden bin.  Looks SO much better.  I disturbed a frog under the giant bay tree.  I couldn’t believe it at first, because what on earth would a frog be doing living half way up a steep hill?  Not a natural place for the accumulation of a water source.  I stopped raking near him/her because it was clearly causing anxiety, and instead whipped out my pocket camera and took a photo.   A pretty little thing and I do hope that it finds its way to a water source eventually.  As I saw a dragonfly later in the day, I assume that someone around here must have a large garden pond.