Sticky

It was still in the 70s and the humidity was even higher.  The sky was frequently overcast but occasionally sunny, which made for lovely reflections.  Yellow jackets and honeybees roamed the camellias.  The strawberry runners I planted survived thus far.  A cabbage white flitted across the yard. 

I sat outside and sorted seeds to save.  The butterfly milkweed seeds were easy but the parsley and rue were tiny and mixed with debris from the seed heads.  Parsley seeds look a bit like the caraway seeds in rye bread, only they're a quarter of the size.  Rue seeds look like blue-gray kidney beans shrunk down to 1/32".  And I discovered that rue seeds are a bit oily.  A clump of brown mushrooms were turning black under the maple in the same spot where the bracket fungus emerged a year ago.  I also found a couple of single mushrooms in the front yard.

The female downy woodpecker had another go at the suet.  I didn't see any other birds except mallards slurping up the floating fluff from the saltbushes.. A squirrel got an itch while on the trunk of the hickory.  It managed to turn around to scratch while hanging by its toenails.  The high temperature turned out to be a record breaker.