Bright

Blue sky with clusters of soft-edge cumulus sped East, while the wind at ground level seemed to be blowing from the East.  The titmice and chickadees were breakfasting early.  A male goldfinch came and drank from the hummer feeder.  The first sunflower seed head is pretty well consumed.  There's another maturing amongst the morning glory vines.  But the big flowers seem to have produced nothing but brown rot.  I looked up sunflower pests and realized that I saw a sunflower beetle the other day - cream with rust stripes. 

A click beetle appeared on my beach towel.  Dragonflies were all over and even a damselfly scouted the patio.  The goldfinch returned to work on the sunflower.  A spider built a dome web in the lavender.  I rescued a full grown 5-lined skink from the pool skimmer.  It was not grateful.  The wind was definitely out of the West and still gusty in the afternoon.Threatening clouds piled up but came to nothing.  The wind continued to gust into the evening.