Rain, finally

Overnight rain left drops on water-repellent leaves.  A blue jay toyed with me and the camera sided with the bird.  First a great shot was waste because the camera focused on the background, then the camera cut off the bottom half of the blue jay.  Then I went off to do things all day.  When I got home, a wren came and sang at me until I pointed the camera at it.  A downy woodpecker tried to pretend it only was interested in the dogwood, not the suet I was sitting beside.

There were lots of interesting insects.  An assassin bug nymph delicately tiptoed down a juniper trunk.  A skipper loved the lavender.  So did some bumble bees.  Wasps were happy with the rue, as were flies.  A stinkbug dangled from a hibiscus leaf.  A larger assassin bug nymph lurked on the rue. 

The sky had looked threatening at mid day but became sunny again later.  It was hot but not as beastly as the last two days.  Clouds returned about the time I got home.  They thickened as they slowly rolled East.  And after the fireflies had been out for a while, there were lightning flashes and a long pause, then thunder.  The temperature seemed to be dropping too.  The weather sites attributed the heat to a high pressure ridge across the Southeast that also caused a deep dip in the jet stream to be stuck in place over the Rockies. Thus the West was cold, the Midwest flooded, and we sizzled.