Overcast and humid. The aspen sapling in my yard sports three new leaves, still more pink than green. At the far end of the garden, a beebalm too is reddening on top.
beebalm
Bright sun. A goldfinch lands on a spent bergamot head and extracts some seeds. Two hummingbirds battle over my four, scraggly beebalms.
Overcast and cool. The wood thrushes continue to call well past mid-morning. Beebalms are beginning to flaunt their spiky, scarlet coiffures.
Nasal calls: nuthatch, crow. Snow dry enough not to clump, but wet enough to cling to every twig and give each dried beebalm head a cap.
A female hummingbird leaves the beebalm to check out the red lettering on my t-shirt, a sleek green torpedo hovering inches from my chest.
A furious buzzing from around the house where hummingbirds duel over the last few beebalm flowers. A half-grown fawn emerges from the woods.
Wood thrush and cardinal song. A male hummingbird chases a silver-spotted skipper off the beebalm, then retreats to a dead branch to preen.
Fire sirens in the valley. On a beebalm stem, right under the scarlet inflorescence, a beard of spittlebug froth catches the sun.
Cloudy and cool. Up to its snout in grass, a deer sneezes. The quiet squeaks of a hummingbird circling the beebalm.
The first beebalm’s forked, scarlet tongues. Nearby on a still-green bergamot bud, a netwing beetle’s antennae test the sudden sunlight.
Come hummingbird and bring some glitter to this damp gray morning, buzz around the bergamot, pizzazz at the beebalm’s one bedraggled bloom.