Sunny morning

There were clouds in the morning sky.  A couple of white throated sparrows kicked mulch into the air.  Squirrels were up and one possible youngster taste-tested a weed growing in the crack at the top of the step.  Not food.  A mallard drake paddled on the flat creek surface. 

More clouds appeared in the West.  Skinks scurried about on their inscrutable business.  Tiger and black swallowtails and possibly another species hunted their special plants.  There were lots of wasps again, including a new one, and I rescued a strange bee from the water.  Fiddleheads are unfurling on the Christmas fern.  One columbine plant escaped being weeded. 

The wretched cat lurked in the next yard and at one point I saw it go over the fence.  I listened to a wren and saw blue jays.  A towhee hunted under the white azalea.  Egrets were out on the creek.  But the feeder went unvisited.  As Snoopy would say, "Stupid cat!" 

A pair of doves foraged around 6pm so the cat must have moved on.  I brought the hummer feeder in to clean - it was drunk dry. 

Some time later, a mockingbird swung on a wire outside the Highlander restaurant.  At sunset the clouds to the North were streaked with pink and purple.  Later lightning lit the clouds but no rain fell.