The season of giant orb-weaving spiders comes again to Poughkeepsie, with this one stretching a web across the decorative grasses bracketing the (unused) front door:

While I screwed around with the camera, she dashed off to one side and began wrapping a package:

Her spinnerets release a torrent of silk during that operation!
Dragging it back to the middle of her orb, she settled down for breakfast.

So did I…
Hand held with the Sony DSC-H5, facing westward in dawn light, using the flash to bring the image up out of the mud. A touch of unsharp mask and some contrast stretching; nothing too drastic.