Partly cloudy and cool. After yesterday evening’s brief rains, the happiness of the plants in my yard is nearly palpable. Formerly desiccated bergamot blossoms have swollen back into bloom.
bergamot
7/12/2023
Cool enough to seem autumnal, but for the wood thrush and hooded warbler calling from the woods’ edge and the hummingbirds buzzing in the bergamot.
7/8/2023
It’s not raining. A hummingbird inspects my bergamot patch—not quite open—and dips into a soapwort bloom before zooming off.
1/24/2022
Clear and still, with yesterday’s snow still clinging to the trees. Bergamot seedheads sport wizards’ caps. Crows yell about the sunrise.
8/6/2021
Bright sun. A goldfinch lands on a spent bergamot head and extracts some seeds. Two hummingbirds battle over my four, scraggly beebalms.
8/4/2021
Cool and overcast. Goldfinches chitter over the chirr of tree crickets. For ten seconds, two hummingbirds share the bergamot.
7/30/2021
Breezy and cool. A female hummingbird zooms back and forth between the bergamot patch and the hillside treetops already aglow in the sun.
7/22/2021
Goldfinches go on chittering the entire time I sit outside, poring over a trail map. One hummingbird sphinx moth works the bergamot.
7/19/2021
Cool morning. A red-spotted purple butterfly drops by the bergamot patch just to sunbathe, sitting motionless like a black flower.
7/16/2021
The sun catches a tiny, white spider ballooning past the porch on a long strand of silk. It touches down in the bergamot, among bumblebees.
7/10/2021
A male hummingbird buzzes in to the bergamot patch, but sips nectar from the soapwort instead. The catbird improvises on a towhee’s tune.
7/5/2021
The first bergamots are in bloom, next to the first soapwort. In walnut-tree shade, the permanent shadow of a common yellowthroat’s mask.
12/14/2020
It’s snowing: fine flakes wet enough to cling to the smallest twigs and give each bergamot stalk a tall white hat. Juncos twitter hosannas.
2/9/2017
Snow fell in the night, starting wet and finishing dry. Eighteen white caps top the dried heads of a bergamot stalk beside the porch.