August has arrived with its late-summer warmth and golden light. Over the next few weeks, as August cools slightly into September, something magical will happen in your garden. One morning, you will walk outside and find that a female orb weaver has honored you by building her web in your goldenrod or suspended from your picket fence. An orb weaver web isn’t just a spider web, it is a work of precise engineering—a circular, wheel-shaped web of up to two feet across with radiating spokes created from strong, sticky silk and designed to capture prey. Numerous species of orb weaver spin their webs in Virginia, but one of the most common is the Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia) with its long legs, silver face, and distinctive black and yellow bands. The female Argiope is sometimes called the writing spider. Argiope consumes the inner spiral of her web every night and rebuilds it in the morning. She adds a vertical zigzag “zipper” pattern of silk, called a stabilimentum, down the cent...