Gardening in the desert

Last month we found out that Jon will be deploying to Iraq sometime in November or December. With Jon gone and my job up in Tucson, we saw no sense in keeping the house. Unfortunately, with the market being so slow right now we could potentially lose money in the process of selling it, especially with those 6% realtor commission fees! So we are going to try to sell it on our own now. Scary process if you ask me.

Anyways, yesterday was a day of yardwork for Jon and I. We are trying to get our house to look as alluring as possible for potential buyers. I had some digging and rearranging to do while Jon was out spraying and pulling weeds. All was going well for me until I saw the following

In the year I've lived here, I was fortunate enough not to run into any rattlesnakes, scorpions, brown recluses, javelinas, and, until now, tarantulas. Suprisingly, I didn't drop my shovel and run away screaming like I pictured myself doing if I, by chance, ever encountered one of these shiver-inducing creatures. I just noticed her drop onto my shovel where I was digging along the house (where spiders love to hide) and thought to myself "Holy crap that is a HUGE spider!" I crouched a little closer to it (very brave on my part) and saw that it wasn't a monstrous normal spider like I originally thought. It was merely a "small" tarantula. Does that make it all any better? No! But I couldn't bear squishing it, as it can get very messy and I just plain didn't have the guts (I've been known to look away even while vacuuming up a spider). Plus, upon closer inspection, I thought there was a strange sort of beauty to it. Had it been inside the house, however, I would have hollered at Jon to take care of it. So I simply scooped it up with my shovel and tossed it as far away from our house as I could.