HUMMINGBUG SEASON

Meet Bah! the hummingbug

I met Bah! last April during the week long blooming of the yellow jasmine on the south wall of my potting shed and mentioned him in the post Us and Them. Well he's back for the blooms again this spring. The yellow jasmine and the white jasmine on the north side are blooming three to four weeks earlier than last year, just as the last of the yellow flowers fall onto the garden path the white blossoms make of my little haven a greenhouse gas chamber, so thick is their perfume as to gag with my face in them.

Bah! waited, or I just didn't see him earlier, until yesterday to reap the bounty of the white jasmine's nectar, which I caught this time on video, so expectant was I. I still don't know what he/she is and, curiously, I am not that curious now that I have made a cursory search of the entomology. I'll just let him be my little unicorn until some spoil sport injects some facts into the fairy tale. Until very close examination Bah! might be the smallest species of hummingbird — their looks and flight and drinking habits are spot on. The background music is from a concert piece called Street Music written for harmonica and played by Corky Segal, which I was virtually powerless to keep from being the soundtrack.

The return of Bah! the hummingbug