Indian summer

Clouds streamed North on a hot wind making the sunshine intermittent but keeping the air warm.  I caught a squirrel doing a Tarzan leap, but not in mid-air as I'd hoped.  Maybe next time.  Later I caught a pair of squirrels having sex.  They went up the cedar for more privacy. 

A Carolina wren perched on a chair back to get a better look inside.  A kingfisher landed on a dock post but took off again immediately.  

I checked on the peppers but they were still green.  A ladybug beetle was protecting them.  The sunflower next to the peppers had made seeds, but after teasing them out of the flower heads I found almost all were hollow.  I don't know if they weren't fertilized or if the drought kept them from filling out.  Glass snails lurked in the mulch between the peppers and the sunflower.  

The grass on the West side of the house was full of gill mushrooms.  There were brown, gray, red, and moldy green caps.  I know the red ones were russulas and I suspect the others were too.  

A monarch butterfly came looking for a meal but the only flowers left were camellias and by afternoon the bees and wasps had drunk them dry.  The saltbush released its seed fluff which coated the creek.  But the milkweed kept its seed parachutes under wraps.  I couldn't figure out how the weather could be right for one kind of airborne seed and not the other.  

About then the camera battery ran down and the replacement wouldn't work.  So I missed some great shots of a bold jumping spider.  As I sat picking out the sunflower seeds, the spider came marching across the table to me.  We made eye contact and I tried to wave my pinkie at it.  It decided to jump onto the chair so I got up and let the spider have it.  But soon it was climbing up the wall and away.  I hope it caught the roach I saw lurking under the soffit.  After dark the camera quit sulking so I took some practice photos of a moth on the window.  

Then I went outside to see what I could do with the moon.  A bright planet was leading the moon up from the horizon.  I checked online and learned it was Mars.  "Later, by November 30, Mars will be closest to Earth for this 2-year period (50.6 million miles, or 81.4 million km, away). And Mars will continue to brighten between now and December 8, when Earth will catch up to Mars in the race of the planets around the sun, bringing Mars to its once-in-2-years opposition."   No wonder it was bright.