Eugene Makovec 2020-09-16 20:37:33
I count my blessings
I enjoy the refreshing ambience of the back deck on a Monday morning in late August. A brown thrasher chirps atop the tangle of sumacs below, then vanishes within. A pair of these birds showed up in the garden this spring — the first I’d ever seen or heard of them — and are said to nest in dense underbrush like this. I hadn’t spotted them for a couple of months, so I’m glad to see they’re still around.
Five chickens scrabble through and bicker over one of the compost bins in their run, enjoying a heap of spent grains from yesterday’s batch of honey hemp ale. I can hear them but am visually separated by a wall of pole beans vining up the side of the chicken-wire enclosure. In a couple of weeks the tomatoes will be mostly spent (or we’ll have had our fill of salsa and spaghetti sauce) and we’ll give the girls the run of the garden. Meanwhile, I think of this morning’s bowl of beans on the kitchen counter, and several gallon Ziplocs in the freezer, and I count my blessings.
At the edge of the lower berm, the resident honey bees meander among the Russian sage, sharing it with an assortment of compatriot pollinators: Carpenters and bumbles practically bump pollen baskets as they bounce from stem to stem, while green metallic sweat bees dart furtively between. No one seems to notice the adjacent black-eyed Susans or a lone evening primrose, though a patch of phlox draws the attention of the aforementioned natives, a couple of eastern swallowtails, and an exotic-looking hummingbird clearwing moth.
An actual hummingbird throttled past my ear earlier, and I quickly pivoted and tracked it to the canna growing against the house, where it tarried for perhaps two seconds before disappearing in a blur. Lisa down the hill feeds the hummers, but they find their way up here for attractions like hyacinth bean and morning glories, also draping the chicken run and sheltering its inhabitants from the summer swelter. Two weeks ago when the geothermal went out, we slept a couple of nights with the windows open. By 6 a.m. the house was cool, we awoke to hummingbirds and bumble bees buzzing the rose of Sharon bushes in full bloom outside our window, and we counted our blessings.
Also escaping the interest of everyone on this particular morning are the spearmint and catnip beneath me — but pollinators tend to work these later in the day, and I noticed yesterday afternoon that my bees had discovered the sedum and late boneset that had just burst forth below the upper deck. Again, they weren’t alone, but were outnumbered by common buckeyes, bottle flies, sweat bees and a half-dozen wasp species — including another first for me, a blue-winged wasp, which I looked up online and was thrilled to learn is a predator of the Japanese beetle. (I’m happy to report that the latter have been fewer than normal this year.)
A light breeze ruffles the top page on my work table, and stirs the cacophony of floral aromas into an already- complex pot of odors emanating from six beehives 20 feet away. I inhale deeply, and make a feeble attempt to separate the scents. By the time you read this, the only thing I’ll smell out here is goldenrod.
The sun has risen in the sky and the late-morning breeze is no longer a cool one. I gather my papers and head inside. The air conditioning is working fine, and I count my blessings.
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