Honored Patio Guests

For several seasons now, I’ve watched hummingbirds come to our patio in the early morning.

Here’s my fear: there’s no guarantee they’ll return. Every spring is its own question. So when the first one shows up at the salvia, planted specifically to draw them in, it isn’t just excitement, it’s surprise and relief and joy all at once.

They’re back. Yes!

This week, Bloom With Me turns two. If you want to know where and why it started, it started right there: at Scott’s office window, looking out on the patio, with me pointing toward our returning guest.

That window gives us two front-row seats to a performance that never gets old.

It’s part of why I started writing and sharing online with you. I wanted to know why the hummingbirds loved our salvia so much (and the lantana). So did you. One thing led to another, my reporting curiosity kicked in, and that curiosity didn’t stop at hummingbirds. Over two years, it pulled me toward all kinds of blooms and the people around them.

As a reporter, I’m curious about the history of blooms and green and growing plants:

like people who grow them,

or sell them,

or name them after me,

or research them,

or write about them for commercial growers,

or judge them for blue ribbons.

And how plants are seen as medicine in some cultures.

You have as many questions as I do. You also have observations that you’ve shared that I’ve learned from and in a lot of cases, you’ve given even more advice.

From someone in Pennsylvania on soil and a product I hadn’t heard of: “I am in Pennsylvania Amish country. They favor mushroom compost and there are several Amish nurseries near my house. You can order it in bulk and either pick it up if you have a truck or they will deliver. It’s very popular with most of my local gardening friends.”

From one reader in Canada on starting seeds inside: “I’ve been harvesting my indoor lettuce and spinach for months. Great advice for us Zone 3a folks. We are still shoveling snow here in Edmonton, Alberta.”

And from the Netherlands and when and how to move indoor plants outside: “When it gets very warm in the summer, I move my lemon geranium, my coleus, and my monstera’s too — but not everything in full sun. I always find it a bit of a shame to move my monsteras outside, because it leaves empty spots on my windowsill. In the Netherlands, windowsills are usually filled with plants.”

A reader named Lynn loved my Father’s Day profile of farmer Joe Axberg so much she thought it shouldn’t stop with my newsletter. She suggested a couple of farm magazines and even sent the links.

“I’m not even from a farming background and I loved that story, so I imagine that readers of these kinds of magazines would just eat that up, smiling the entire time.”

I followed up on the links. My profile of Joe runs this fall in Farmer-Ish Magazine, a quarterly online journal.

For the first time, because of a project I’m working on, I’ve slowed down and really paid attention to what my plants are telling me.

From Laura Irish-Hanson, horticulture educator with University of Minnesota Extension, advice in mid-July about looking for disease and insects.

It was interesting that for the first time I discovered I had :

Powdery Mildew- Check.

Slugs on my basil- Check.

Japanese beetles- Check.

Spider Mites on my tomatoes- Check.

But, wait. There’s more.

Rabbits Who Love Small Bites On Their Patio Food Crawl- Double Check.

Paying attention finally showed me what was really going on out there.

Nature’s creatures were visiting all the blooms.

What I wasn’t expecting was a lesson in patience. This year I planted a salvia named “Black and Bloom.” I haven’t grown this type before and I’ve been watching these two containers grow stalks higher than I’ve ever seen. They easily reach 5 feet tall now. What made me anxious was that they didn’t start blooming until the last week of July. In other summers, I had a different type that would have started blooming at the beginning of July. That means this plant’s growing season didn’t match up with the male Ruby-throated’s calendar.

I am disappointed because now they’ve already left our patio to head south to Mexico. We’ve learned their pattern is to leave before the females and in the spring, return to Minnesota before the females arrive. The hummingbirds that remain now are moms and the babies born this spring. They’re honored guests. They just don’t have the scarlet throats.

While they visit we observe they fly from bloom to bloom, entering beak first, then backing out and flying up to the next. I’ve been out watering and have watched them hover, look at me, come closer while I talk to them, and then with a winged flourish, return to their schedule of feeding.

That’s remarkable. It’s a gift.

At some point, at the end of summer, they’ll have one more appointment with our patio before they head south to overwinter. And because they like coming back to neighborhoods they recognize, we hope to have another container with salvia waiting for them next year.

What we’ve watched over the years is the garden and our visitors keep to their own calendar, not ours. But our welcome sign will be out and we’ll be waiting.

That’s my why.

As I look toward the future, many thanks are in order.

First: A big thank you to you, my readers. I’m always delighted to see the comments you leave after a newsletter comes out. Your support encourages me to keep going.

Second: More thanks go to Michael Helmke , my partner who helps me get this newsletter to you, my trusted sounding board on everything else, and the one who keeps my ideas honest.

Finally, for Scott. My love. You’re in every part of this, the window we watch from, the photos, the waiting. Two years of Wednesdays, and you’ve never once made me feel like I was doing it alone. Thank you for weathering the droughts and the floods with me. I couldn’t do this without you. Let’s keep adventuring together, honey.

Diana

#bloomwithme