Day 37: Hummingbirds & Hard Cider

The smell of dirt in your nostrils and the feel of grit in your nails can solve just about any melancholy. Especially when the sun is just a little hotter than comfortable and the breeze comes quickly to your aid. So today, I planted. The pretty things. Not the eating things. The front porch baskets and the staircase urns. The green hibiscus that you bring in every fall, convinced you can overwinter, and throw out every spring, dried and brown.

I made sure to place them where I’ll see through windows, the things I’ve helped to grow.

It’s good to know you help things grow.

 

And when it was done – when the soil was swept, and the weeds wheelbarrowed, the hose wound round, and the petunias dead-headed – I grabbed myself a cider and sat, quiet and still, watching new petals play in sturdy draft.

Good things happen when you stop moving.

 

The first hummingbird I’ve seen this year came by to sample my new wares. The first thing you hear when a hummingbird pays you a visit is, well, the hum.

It’s a solid beating of air like a B-52 Bumblebee with a Bose Bluetooth.

The second thing you hear is the beep. (They beep if they like you.) And if they REALLY like you, they stare at you, midair and close, beeping and hovering like a freaky sentinel from The Matrix.

Yes, there is always the millisecond that I panic, thinking this little hummingbird is going to turn rabid and peck my eyes out, and I’ll be left groping for the front door, all Oedipus like and tainted.
But that soon passes and
I just try to hold as still as I can.
so he’ll stay a little while longer.

Eventually, my restrained smile forces it’s way out upon my lips and the hummingbird darts away at the change in expression. (Perhaps he knows he cannot peck my eyes out when I’m squinting in smile style, and he leaves defeated, ready to attack again another day…)

These are my good things today:

flowers on the front porch
cider in hand
didn’t die by proboscis impalement

 

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