Sticky

After breakfast, I went outside to pull up poison ivy that I hoped had been loosened by the rain.  A titmouse and a blue jay wanted to know when the bark butter balls were coming so I fetched some.  A gray sky lowered the temperature but raised the humidity.  A little later when I went out front to check on the tomatoes and peppers, I began to sweat immediately.  Leaves were still wet from last night's rain.  Of course there was less of a breeze away from the creek. 

A female widow skimmer clung to a stake near the sheet spider web in the corner of the window - Scylla & Charybdis for a flying insect. At lunch I discovered the male widow skimmer on a stake closer to the door.  Of course there were also blue dashers.  A Carolina saddlebags held the vantage point atop the hackberry.  And one butterfly, a cloudless sulphur, flitted around the hibiscus. 

A brown thrasher and a red bellied woodpecker also wanted bark butter balls.  Three titmice bounced around in the wild cherry.  I tried to rescue a lacewing but it may have been dead before it fell into the water.  The sky got very interesting after 6pm and by 7pm a thunderhead was building in the West, casting shadows across the wispier clouds.  An egret flew home as the clouds gradually covered the sky.  The rain began around 7:30pm.