The Hummingbird and Touch-Me-Not - Version 3

     It was in the early morning hour in the moments just after dawn. It was sometime before I'd slip into my favorite polka-dot goulashes to walk the grounds.  It was long before I'd make a lot of noise watering and tending my unruly garden. As soon as the sun reached the tips of the tall pine trees I'd be throwing a bright yellow ball to my teenage granddog, a gangly lab the color of a moonless night who runs all over my front yard looking like he's overdosed on caffeine.  He'd leap in the air to catch that ball as it whistled into the wind.  All the while my geriatric golden retriever who can barely walk, would watch with a yawn.  

     It was there in the stillness of those moments before I walked outside with my coffee and my dogs that I saw a tiny little hummingbird.  

    Ruby-throated hummingbirds who spend the winter in Florida or maybe South America.  This female weighs about as much as a penny.  Her charm's summer home is my yard in Maine.  Every time I watch her I feel blessed or maybe magical.  But definitely charmed as I laugh at the perfect name for a collection of hummingbirds.  The crimson-colored neck of her father glistens in the sun. His luminescent head shimmers as the feathers morph from green to blue while he pokes his long beak in and out of the fake flowers of my hummingbird feeder.  She's colored like her mom, camouflaged in greens and browns that match her woodland home.  

    It was late summer and I was peeking out my porch window, watching her seek a favorite blossom over behind the barn.  Jewelweed.  Raindrops sparkling like jewels after a rain.  That's where the plant with tiny blossoms gets its name.  The brightly colored blossom in the shape of a cup was irresistible to pollinators like Ruby.  Old flower pouches had fallen off here and there, leaving long slender seed pods behind.  I smiled at a doe silently ambling across my yard, avoiding the hostas she loves because I'd sprayed soap on them the night before.  

    I watched as she fluttered and spied a blossom, hanging plumb and ready.  It looked like a pendant on the neck of a graceful green stem.  Hovering to stillness just beyond the lip of the petal she pointed her slender beak deep within.  Jewelweed's nectar-filled spurs would be her reward.  Her wings moved the air back and forth and although I couldn't hear I knew she sounded little a motor outboard humming in the breeze as a loaded seed pod drooped nearby.  

    I kept watching as the tiny little hummingbird backed up and moved onto another bloom.  Her wing must have gently tapped the waiting, spring-loaded seed pod that hung expectantly to carry life on.  Bam!  The Jewelweed's chamber plump with seeds exploded with a loud pop and seeds flew in the air. The hummingbird zipped away, wings flapping frantically.  In a second she was ninety feet away from the vacant and broken seed pod that snapped away the morning calm.  

    No wonder that tiny cornucopia-shaped plant, the color of a setting sun, is referred to as the Touch-Me-Not plant I think and laugh to myself.  

    I imagined one little ruby-throated hummingbird that would not be touching Jeweleweed's exploding seed pods again any time soon.