In the two months I’ve been away, my yard and garden have turned alien, taken over by stiltgrass. The buzz of a hummingbird in the bergamot.
ruby-throated hummingbird
From the herb bed, I hear the squeaks of a hummingbird sipping from the columbine. Then he’s in my face, gorget like a small red torch.
A hummingbird sits on the tip of one of the dead cherry’s few remaining twigs, like a fat green leaf with the stem pointing the wrong way.
Green blur: a hummingbird. Two or three pileated woodpeckers cackle back and forth. The meter reader’s truck, its flashing yellow light.
Sitting outside with my laptop, blind to the world. A phoebe flies past two feet from my nose, followed a minute later by a hummingbird.
The sound of a hummingbird at full throttle: a male rocketing back and forth in front of the cedar tree for a hidden female audience of one.
A fawn among the wild garlic: the white tops continue in the spots of its coat. Later, a hummingbird at the beebalm: matching red throats.
Cool and clear; mist rising off the trees. From around the corner of the house, the zoom and chatter of a hummingbird’s courtship flight.
Chipmunks chase in the driveway. A hummingbird hovers beside the porch, sipping rainwater from a spiderweb in the tall weeds.
A hummingbird hovers over the red porch floor made glossy by wind-blown rain. A catbird on a dead limb tilts its head to eye the clouds.
A hummingbird buzzes into the garden, and I follow her bill to the last bergamot flower’s four thin flagons. A truck clatters past.
A buck in velvet, his coat already turning gray, startles up out of the grass. A hungry hummingbird presses her bill to the metal flamingo.
Wood thrush and cardinal song. A male hummingbird chases a silver-spotted skipper off the beebalm, then retreats to a dead branch to preen.
A ten-minute downpour. In its aftermath, the ruby-throated hummingbird’s eponymous throat patch rising like a small sun from the weeds.