Finally, Hummingbirds

August 13, 2024

Beloved:
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        I love how a hummingbird up close sounds like a helicopter way off.  They’ve finally arrived at my feeders, four months past when they usually show up.  My neighbor speculates it may be due to insecticides being sprayed on our lawns.  The worker must have sneezed when spraying near my flower bed, because some of my lavender got hit and died alongside the broadleaf.  Next year we are going to put up little “do not spray” flags on what sad grass we have.  My milkweed still doesn’t have any caterpillars on it either, another clue that the good bugs may have up and left the neighborhood.  The point is, the hummers are finally here, hovering around my flowerbeds in the front and my screen porch in the back, resting on the arch of the shepherd's hook which holds the waterer and the suet feeder.  I put a wire fence around it because the mower ran too close and hooked himself like a sheep.  He likes to mow really fast.
        It’s only August 13th but I can feel the summer winding down.  The end of every season makes me just a little sad, no matter how much I love the next one.  And I love them all.  Each reminds me of ones before – like this end of summer picture I took years ago in the garden of my previous house.  I loved that garden and think about it often.  I wonder if it remembers me.  Do hummingbirds still come and go from the perennials I planted, drinking grass and flowers never sprayed with poison?  I like thinking so.
        I live here now, in a place becoming more precious by the day.  I have dirt to dig and feeders to fill, neighbors with whom to share the small news of the day.  I am safe and loved and watched over by more people than I remember to thank.  And finally, the hummingbirds arrive in their own time to hallow this season, this house, and my life with that up-close-way-off music of their tiny wings, to remind me that as much as some things change, certain things never do.  For which I am more grateful than I have words.

~peace & prayers, 
pastor annette