Hell0, Crabby!

My second blip of a crab spider - something that I never even knew existed until I started blipping! This is the tiniest of spiders - and it seems to prefer sitting on colorful flowers, awaiting its prey. This one was on a beautiful cosmos blossom, until I spooked it ... whereupon it repelled down about 2 inches to settle on a cosmos bud. Making the perfect photo.

The tree guys were working on our neighbor's house until nearly 3 so they got a late start with us. However, they did an amazing job - chopped the huge tree that fell in the storm into 18-inch chunks that can be split into firewood; taking down a huge hickory tree next to our deck that sustained fatal damage in the storm, topping the sugar maple (also next to the deck) and taking a 50- foot dangling hunk off another tree. It was pretty incredible watching these four guys work - the amount of skill it takes to fell an 80-foot hickory in a way that doesn't damage anything is nothing short of amazing. And they seem to be fearless. It was money well spent, and we now have enough firewood to sustain a small village.

And, I had another hummer visit the feeders in the midst of all the activity, which took me totally by surprise. Definitely a migrant - but so happy that my garden and feeders can provide some much-needed food on their journey south.

I posted a 30 second video of one of the tree maneuvers and 8 other shots from today (spiders, bee, hummer, goldfinch) on Flickr, starting HERE. I'm still not feeling totally human, but I do think that some of it is weather-related sinus/allergy problems - I always seem to feel it when the barometric pressure changes. I'm more accurate than The Weather Channel...

I'm off to bed for a little TV and cuddling with Hubs - he worked like a dog today, splitting wood, hauling wood, chainsawing branches ...

Thanks for sending yesterday's slightly imperfect butterfly to the Spotlight!

xxoo
Debbu