Monday macrobug: Garden spider

Found this lovely garden spider while working in the yard on the last day of August…

It’s a big beastie; here’s a pencil tip for scale:

I induced her to briefly face upward:

…but she definitely preferred to be oriented head-down:

I then crouched lower, and aimed the camera up, resulting in a different exposure and a different color “feel”…

Then she got sick of me and my camera, and crawled off to some vegetative shelter: a thistle plant:

And there I left her, me gloriously impressed with this beautiful creature…