I am in my new, rented, Victorian back yard, refreshing the pot garden and pond in the fading light, though there’s a spectacular beauty who already presides here, and I acknowledge I am in her realm. She is known by the taxonomists as Araneus diadematus, garden orb-web spider, but I call her Queen. Queen has made her home inside the head of my sea horse wind chime, and I have to remember to avoid her incredible web at all times as I carefully potter about in her shadow.

White markings on her abdomen in the shape of a cross are made from cells containing the protein guanine. Guanine is also found in the eyes of deep ocean fish, and swamp crocodiles, and in the droppings of cave bats and cliff birds all around the world. It’s also one of the very building blocks of all DNA and RNA, including yours and mine.

The Great Queen Guanine of Our Back Yard; my guanine-kin, centre of spennowan.

We are all connected.

 

 

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