Hummingbird Feasting on Jewelweed

I can almost hear the season ticking by; things are moving along into late summer, and the hummingbirds are very active in our yard. In the early days of the house, I used to religiously trim and prune everything to keep things "neat." This involved whacking the plants that grew around the edges of the yard, chief of which is jewelweed.

But after the first few years, I stopped doing that. For one, it seemed like wasted effort: my arms were aching from all that whacking, and all those plants kept coming back. And for another, my perspective changed: I realized that it was more important (to me, at least) to keep a somewhat wilder yard, for the sake of the critters. I let the jewelweed grow.

Jewelweed is also known as touch-me-not. Once the blooms go to seed, if you touch the seed pod, the spring inside snaps and the seeds are flung wildly to the winds. Jewelweed grows long and lush in and around our yard now, and the orange blooms provide food for the late-season creatures. It is especially adored by the bumblebees and hummingbirds.

It was a hot summer day and we had been doing some necessary things around the house and yard in the morning. One of these necessary things was me crawling around the edges of the driveway, prepping it to be sealed sometime soon.

It's hot, sweaty, tedious work, and I'd much rather my nearly two hours kneeling had been spent with camera instead. Oh well. Such are the joys of home ownership! Where there are decks to paint and driveways to seal and roofs and gutters to keep clean. (Got extra energy? Have extra time or money you have no idea what to do with? Buy a house!)

But by early afternoon, I was in the backyard with my book and my camera, enjoying the antics of the hummingbirds. There is one who chirps all the time, whether flying or eating, that I call Chatterbox. It often chats with me at dawn; I sing out Good Morning, Little Bird, and it answers back.

But there are at least three others as well. They chase each other all around the yard, sometimes going high into the sky. I spotted a breeze among the jewelweed and realized it was of bird origin, made by the beating of tiny wings. A hummingbird was flying low, drinking tasty sips of nectar from the orange blooms that we have spared.

The soundtrack: Be Our Guest, from Beauty and the Beast. By the way, this is one of my favorite scenes in any Disney movie, ever. When I think of hospitality, I think of this. And I do encourage others to change their perspective about what a yard is for. What if it were a food pantry for the creatures? What if?