Equinox

I used to expect the equinox would always fall on the 21st, maybe the 22d in a leap year, which this is not.  An explanation says it occurs when the terminator is aligned with the axis of Earth's rotation.  That moment actually occurred after sunset yesterday which put it into today at Greenwich, UK.  And it is almost never on the 21st.  But is is a Pagan holiday. 

A black swallowtail flitted all around the Argiope but didn't get snagged.  I found an amberwing when I looked at my photo of the saltbush.  There was a frog in the skimmer again.  I gave it a stern lecture and let it go but when it didn't hop off, I took some photos. 

K bought a pansy and I dug a hole in the raised mulch bed.  But I encountered a very yucky and puzzling situation.  First, the undersides of the bark pieces were coated with white hyphae in fans of fine threads and thicker areas that looked like foliose lichens. Finding mycelium was no surprise as mulch always seems to come inoculated with some fungus or other.  We've had birds nests and stink horns. A pity it never seems to be morels.  Anyway, under the mulch, the dirt was soft and the trowel plunged right into a cluster of wet white blobs.  They did not seem to have any structure or regular shape.  I don't know if they were mushrooms-in-waiting, grubs, or bulbs.  

Hummers let us know the juice had gone off.  Chickadees bragged about their daring in visiting the feeder while I sat on the patio.  The honeymoon was over for the cardinals - he shoved her off the feeder, twice!  The crows in the oak appear to keep all other birds away from the acorns. When the last crow flew off, blue jays appeared instantly.  But the crows came back.  Something dropped a whole branch into the pool.  Sometimes I think they drop acorns on purpose to watch me swim for them.  In the late afternoon, the hot sun was overtaken bu a blanket of cloud.   It's unlikely that tomorrow's full harvest moon will be visible.