No sign of Gilligan, but I definitely saw the Skipper...

...the Silver-spotted Skipper, that is!  There were at least three of these butterflies on the purple bee balm in my front garden this evening, along with several bumble bees.  My purple bee balms is rather scrawny for some reason, but that didn't seem to stop the Skippers and bees from feasting this evening.  It was fascinating to watch the Skippers feeding...sticking their long proboscises (tongues) into each of the flowers on the bee balm.  I snapped two pretty good pictures and shot a little bit of video for your enjoyment!

Earlier this morning, while I was mixing up two batches of cookie dough (Sinnerdoodles and Tropical Chip Cookies), I heard a thunderous roar approaching the house.  I went out on the deck, camera in hand, and looked up to see two Apache helicopters flying over. 

 

I took a peek over the railing of the deck at the pond (which is currently without its waterfall because Chris suspects the impeller shaft on the pump broke - he'll be investigating that this week) and saw one of the frogs front and center on one of the lily pads.  

Oh, and the cookies?  Wound up being delicious!  Especially the Sinnerdoodles.  Let me explain their name. I was planning to make a batch of Snickerdoodles to send to a friend.  Last Friday, Chris and I visited Hershey's Chocolate World and I looked at the variety of cookies available at the bakery.  One of them was an Oatmeal Raisin Cookie with Hershey's Cinnamon Chips.  I had never heard of cinnamon chips before.  Lo and behold, they sold them at Chocolate World.  I was going to buy a bag to experiment with when Chris said, "You should add them to Clay's Snickerdoodles."  We started talking about how cinnamon-y the cookies would be and I said we'd have to call them Cinna-doodles.  Chris thought they would be so delicious and hardcore that we should call them Sinnerdoodles. 

The Tropical Chip Cookies are pretty good.  They are a basic oatmeal cookie base with the following additions:  white chocolate chips, dried coconut, chopped macadamia nuts, and dried pineapple.  They were an experimental batch; I've already identified some tweaks I'll make to the next batch (replace vanilla extract with coconut extract, double the pineapple and freeze it before chopping).  But I mean really...with all of those ingredients, it's not like they aren't going to be tasty as is!