Something beautiful happened this morning!
Background: A favorite passion of my late partner Daniel was backyard birdfeeding. He was always improving and squirrel-proofing the birdfeeders, and spending lots of money on the very best bird food. He loved watching all of the birds from the windows, especially the finches. Occasionally we would get a visit from something more rare, such as an Oriole or a red-headed woodpecker, or even a Pileated woodpecker. Each spring Daniel hung up bright red hummingbird feeders, carefully measuring the sugar water and scrubbing the feeders every three days to keep the hummingbirds from getting sick.
When he passed away, a few people said, “Please keep the birdfeeders up.” I did leave the feeders up, but I only filled them on special occasions. I didn’t go out on bitter winter mornings and freeze my fingers on the latches. I didn’t order 10-pound bags of expensive bird food.
I *did* begin cultivating the sizeable yard into wildflower patches and meadows, adding native plants as quickly as I could, allowing the native plant seeds that were already present in the soil to mature and spread. It was messy. He would not have liked that. It’s also been rewarding, peaceful, challenging, and educational. I’m learning the names of the plants. I’m seeing plants thrive in the terrible clay soil, even in a drought. I’ve seen an expensive plant turn black and die after I planted it, only to come roaring back the following spring. I’ve learned about the benefits of each of us using our little piece of earth (even if it’s an apartment balcony) to grow things, to produce more oxygen, more beauty, more habitat and … more food for birds (in the form of berries, nectar and the bugs that are attracted to native plants).
****This morning****
After my morning run, I took a detour through the front yard on the paths we’ve mowed through the native plants (and the persistent grasses that I’m slowly working to eliminate). I was checking my heliopsis and my late boneset, both huge plants that grow taller than me and will flower later on.
(When I say “check,” I mean that I sometimes touch their leaves, mutter encouragingly to them, and enjoy seeing their growth.)
I took another path back to the driveway, past a small bed of native wildflowers given to me by two other gardeners. One of them, foxglove beardtongue, didn’t do anything when I planted it last year. It stayed about four inches high until winter, when it wilted and seemed to disappear. This spring, it exploded with growth and then delighted me with tall sprays of white flowers at eye-level. As I walked past, I saw movement and smiled at the sight of a big bumblebee buzzing up to each flower, crawling inside and then backing its fuzzy butt out of the flower petals.
As I was getting my phone out to take a photo of the bee, the most gorgeous ruby-throated hummingbird zoomed up to a flower, grabbed some nectar at light-speed, and before I could even press the camera button, buzzed back across the street to the treeline.
I was so thrilled! I had been telling myself that it was okay not to fill the birdfeeders, because I’m creating natural food for the birds. Not only food, but habitat. Nesting materials. The front yard, which had always been carefully mowed in perfect straight lines, was devoid of life before. Now there are grasshoppers and bees and beetles. There are birds swooping down to eat the bugs. There are birds nesting in the trees and hedges. Once there was a red-shouldered hawk sitting on the AT&T utility box, hunting. At night I hear crickets and frogs.
Still I had this nagging feeling that Daniel would have been disappointed in me for not putting out the hummingbird feeders.
Seeing the hummingbird come to feast on my flowers was pure joy!
