Summery

It was a bit sweaty on the front patio but lovely in back with shade and a breeze.  At least it was lovely till neighbors decided to operate their own shipyard and run exceedingly loud motors on their dock.  Oh well.  At breakfast we saw a male ruby throat but he didn't stay long and didn't come back.  And the camera focus betrayed me.

In the afternoon I checked out the front patio.  The first critter I saw was a magnolia green jumping spider on the wall.  Lyssomanes viridis. I tried to coax it over to the potted plants but it jumped out of sight. 

Something attacked the pepper leaves and a minuscule praying mantis was standing guard over a hole in a leaf.  It didn't like me to get too close but it seemed determined to stay. 

A yellow jacket queen prowled over the stones in the stream bed.  The jasmine was blooming and smelled fragrant.  The many bells and the ice plant were blooming too, but without scents.  I picked a strawberry, but it wasn't in very good shape.  The false indigo shot out of the ground and put out flower spikes. 

The bluebirds were back in the nest box.  One watched me watch them.  The heat became unpleasant so I moved to the back yard.  The bluebirds followed after a while.  A wren and a blue jay also visited the bark butter ball feeder. 

Pollinators jostled each other on the rue.  I saw wasps, honeybees, carpenter and bumblebees.  One bumblebee fed very close to a first instar caterpillar.  The sky kept changing moods from wispy haze to big cumulus clouds and back.

A great crested flycatcher hunted in the oak.  A couple of swallows passed over.  A red bellied woodpecker worked on a limb higher in the oak.  And a female hummingbird came to the feeder.