A ray of sunlight reaches down to the deck and an immature southeastern five-lined skink pulls himself up through a crack to bathe in its warmth, the blue of its tail nearly glowing in the amber light.
My eye catches movement on the walking path that I cut between the woodland and the meadow, and I watch a mother turkey leading her three small poults to the nearby meadow to search for grasshoppers. When the entourage reaches the creek, I observe the poults dashing around after insects while the hen nibbles blackberries from a nearby bush.
By midday, a few of the wildflowers have succumbed to the heat, and as I water them, I see one of the little fence lizards watching for another insect to be flushed out from the mulch. A green anole lays along the branch of a hog plum waiting for a meal of bee or wasp to happen by. A red-shouldered hawk drops to the ground near the tree line, where it lingers for a second or two before launching skyward toward her nestlings – clutching their next meal of lizard. One of the many gopher tortoises, this one a big male, is seen walking along the path – his stately progress further slowed by his frequent but brief stops to sample a chickweed leaf or prickly pear cactus pad.