Like most gardeners, I have accumulated a fair amount of yard art. I have a gnome, for instance, and a gazing ball or two, and a plastic Adelie penguin that covers up an obnoxious pipe.
However, the best garden art we have is the live kind. And when live birds combine with yard art, you really have something. I'm still trying to get a photo of a phoebe perched on the penguin's head. Working on it.
Hummingbirds are the chief carriers of charming around here. They will fetch up on the darnedest things, the main requirement being that the perch be small around enough for their teeny tiny feet. There is almost always one on the bail of my hanging baskets on the front porch.
Little stretching dude.
Look closely, and you will see two tiny and admittedly not very spectacular garden ornaments, each with its own bail to perch on. How sweet. I mean, they're not spectacular until you realize that, while some people have stone lions or Foo dogs on either side of their front door, we have live hummingbirds guarding our door. Arf! Arf!
Not to be outdone, Gouty's mate takes the morning sun on our farm bell, the same one that graced Bill's house in Pella, Iowa, when he was a little kid, the one that, when rung, brought Billy and Andy home from Bunnyland.
My personal favorite is the male hummer who likes to sit on the frog's kitestring in the shade bed on the north side of the house. He likes the little gentle bounce he gets when he lands, or when the wind blows.
For sheer serendipity, though, I have to hand it to this shot of life imitating the
Garden Forge art made by our friends Betsy and Jan.
for those big shrubs on the top shelf are gardenia and poet's jasmine, the things I need to survive winter...and oh I must take some heliotrope cuttings today!! I always forget!
and many geranium cuttings, rooted and just waiting to burgeon. There is lobelia seeded into every pot, already abloom. So we will have plenty of whitefly this winter.
and he proved to be surely the fattest most beautiful bluebird on the planet. From the shrill of his voice when I picked him up I could tell he was born this year, perhaps on our place. His wings check out, no breaks or even bruises and he's fat as butter but he can't fly so I will give him food and time and love.
and later on when he's rested up and trying his wings, a screened flight tent and we will see what all that does for him.
Phoebe drowning in honeysuckle. Photo by her daddy, Bill Thompson III.
June is overwhelming. I love it so much. I just wish I could take some of this bounty and spread it out through the rest of the year, that's all. I wish June lasted three or four months, so I could take it all in. But everyone's in a hurry, everyone's nesting, everyone's blooming, everyone's singing, and I can't keep up. I just grab little bouquets as I go.
For sheer serendipity, though, I have to hand it to this shot of life imitating the Garden Forge art made by our friends Betsy and Jan.
