Again With The Little Critters!

It feels like the lightning bugs showed up early this year. Not that I'm complaining! They're one of the few bugs I don't mind approaching. They're very patient subjects when seated, as above, but a little harder to capture when aloft and aglow, as below.
Although our backyard wildlife is humble in its variety and lacks exoticism, I am, apparently, easy to fascinate.

Our little lizard colony continues to thrive; can you see that one below, looks like he's laughing at me? I had to hide behind the foliage to take this. Look how cute he is with his mouth open! Actually, he was in the process of swallowing a bug.

And look at this guy, below, why haven't I ever seen one before? Have I just been unobservant all these years?
Leucauge venusta

This beautiful glittery-gold-and-iridescent-green-bodied spider is keeping an immaculate horizontal orb web behind my garage, completely immobilizing my agriculture-recycling bin for the last four days now, but he's so interesting I'm letting him be. How do I know the fancy Latin name for this arachnid? Once again, I found my answer on BugGuide, an active and informed "online community of naturalists." This time, instead of posting a photo of my mystery caterpillar as I did before and waiting for a reply, I used the search box on the main page to bring up photos with the keywords 'green spider', and found a dead match in the thumbnails on the first page of results.