Living dangerously

Concert day is always hectic, so I was grateful that this trio gave me an easy photo opportunity in the garden this morning - especially after yesterday's pond dipping experience, which has left me somewhat sore, and still slightly discombobulated. 

The Flower Spider is usually lurking somewhere around that dead honeysuckle shoot (which is the only reason I haven't removed it), and a few minutes earlier I'd photographed her in exactly the same spot, at which point there wasn't even one shieldbug anywhere in sight. So this pair chose their marital bed while she was sitting there, rather than having had her creep up on them. It seems a little risky - which is probably the moment when I should choose not to draw any salacious parallels with the behaviour of some humans - but it could be that they felt she was too small to be a serious threat. And in fairness, she probably is: large Garden Spiders will take a Green Shieldbug, but bees and flies are more usual prey for Misumena vatia. She might also not be hungry (though the shieldbugs could hardly know that), because a couple of days ago she caught a bluebottle that was big enough to have fed her for quite a while. In fact, this is the first time I've seen her since I watched her dragging it away into the shadows, to turn it into soup.

At this afternoon's final rehearsal with the soloists and orchestra, The Creation finally came together, and the choir went into the performance this evening on a high. There were several people I know in the audience, including Technophobe  and LooseCanon, and all of them were very kind and complimentary about the concert. The aunt of another alto told me how much she'd enjoyed it, and thanked me for all the pleasure the choir had given the audience - which was charming, and left me feeling slightly emotional. No one mentioned the few seconds in the final fugue when at least half the alto section simultaneously lost our way and had to stop singing, but we managed to grab a new cue quite quickly from the men behind us and the sopranos on our right, and went charging off again - so maybe it was less obvious to the audience than it was to us. I certainly hope so.

In the summer I understand that we'll be inviting the audience to join us in a scratch performance of Vivaldi's Gloria, which sounds as though it could be a lot of fun.