Thunderstorm

All day I waited for the storm but it didn't happen till 5pm.  Before that, clouds gathered and dissipated several times. I got into the pool before lunch because I expected the storm in the early afternoon.  Spiders and a click beetle were lucky I did. One spider was a mama wolf, maybe the one that was on the ladder yesterday. 

The sky was overcast at breakfast.  A juvenile male cardinal was hanging around the feeder.  Hummers were feeding eagerly. A slaty skimmer maintained a vigilant guard on the bark butter.  Big carpenter bees worked over the milkweed.  Tiny pollinators preferred the portulaca.  So did a skipper.

When I got out of the water and sat to drip, a skink appeared and hunted for something all over the walkway on the creek side of the pool.  It went up nearly to the ladder back and forth from the mulch to the pool edge.  It continued around the corner and up to me where it may have heard the camera noise.  Anyway, it hid under the flip-flop on my foot!  The sky cleared while I was in the water so I needed to find some shade. 

A tiger swallowtail tantalized me by flitting slowly, but never alighting.  The male goldfinch came for water.  Apparently the sunflower seeds don't meet his discriminating taste..  The young cardinal seemed alarmed by the sound of thunder.  A brown thrasher scuttled along under the shrubbery.  Then a palamedes swallowtail took up the role of camera tease. 

The storm came on while I was in the shower.  It was as though night had come at 5pm.  And then blinding rain fell and a sheet of water poured off the roof.  Apparently the rain flooded wherever our resident snake had been living because the poor thing went side-winding across the patio.  For once, I got lucky - I was taking a picture of the watering can in the rain when the snake appeared. 

Lightening didn't get going until the rain had slackened.  I wasted effort trying to catch a bolt.  Apparently the storm was worse in Norfolk and an underpass flooded.  Chickadees and hummers did not wait for the storm to pass before they returned to their feeders. Finally the clouds thinned and we got a bit of sunshine before sunset.