Spiders

Apparently I have a lot of funnel-web spiders.  These are not the monsters that live in Australia and can kill people.  The ones I have are mostly tiny.  In the garage I have some bigger ones, but the spiders who make webs out in the grass are so small that they usually go unnoticed, unless the dew highights their webs.  Then it becomes apparent that there are a lot of them.

I or the dog probably blunder through several per day, and mowing must wreak wholesale destruction on them.

Speaking of spiders, I'm growing Jerusalem artichokes again this year, again in pots.  And again, as was true previously, I have lynx spiders on them...is there some affinity that lynx spiders have for Jerusalem artichokes? 

Last, I found this in the chicken tractor:

While I'm usually a live-and-let-live person, I draw the line at poisonous spiders in close proximity to the livestock. Yes, they are non-aggressive and primarily interested in insects--which you can see a few carcasses of at the lower edge of the picture--but the chickens are also prone to try to grab anything that moves.  It was also a concern that the web was just above areas I access to service the chickens; running into the web head-first is what made me notice it. So I removed her and her next-generation egg sac.

Widows are supposedly common in Georgia, but I don't see them very often.  One year at my old house I had several, which probably means a female had come in and hatched a brood.  Otherwise, I see one every couple of years.  The other poisonous species, brown recluse, has apparently only been documented in relatively few counties, mostly in the northwest part of the state.