Fireflies!

Hummers were stuffing themselves for the trip.  Someone or something left me a dead skink posed next to the pool as though it were basking in the sunlight.  I found another skink corpse in the skimmer along with many leaves.  Trees have been shedding because it's been so dry, not because summer is almost over. 

The cast exoskeleton of a half-grown praying mantis was lodged in the azalea beside the house.  Under the oak I found two conk fungus fruiting bodies emerging from the mulch.  A yellow rose bloomed.  The red aster had a bud.  The sunflower was a disaster.  Something turned the ripening seeds into sawdust.  I looked for the spiders but their webs were full of debris from the lawnmower so I guess they're gone.  When I looked at the picture of the ground cherries I took, there was a two-lined spittlebug or froghopper, Prosapia bicincta.

After dark, I went outside to photograph the moon and saw several fireflies in both back and front yard. The moon was low to the South and thus behind the pecan. The branches created some weird kind of lens effect.  That's why I switched to the front yard.  But none of those pictures were in focus.  Anyway, I don't recall fireflies this late in the year, before.