Black and Yellow Garden Spider

A few weeks ago we had a cool looking spider make a web in the corner of our deck. I took a picture but never got around to researching before hard rains came and wiped out the web.

Today, as I am in the living room watching my husband play video games while I blog, I noticed out the window what I thought to be the spider – it was back! I grabbed my camera and took a closer look, however, upon close examination, I found it to be the same type of spider but a little different in length of torso and legs.

After some researching this afternoon, I found out that both spiders are female due to their size (the first one was just a little longer than the new one). They are both Black and Yellow Garden Spiders (Argiope aurantia) (Wikipedia has a really nice article too). I’ve never seen spiders like this before even though research tells me they are quite common. He is now our garden variety visitor for a little while.