I’d seen the plant many times but never really noticed it.
Tall and bushy, with oval leaves and minuscule orange tubular flowers, it spread in large clumps alongside our RV at Lac des Mille Lac.
At first, I only saw it as background to a busy little hummingbird who harvested its sweet nectar several times a day.
Hummingbirds were my summer fascination.
In May when spring sunlight filled the sky long into the evening, my Canadian neighbor told me that hummingbirds are her Mother’s Day present. They come back to the North on Mother’s Day and leave for the South on Labor Day.
Each visit to Lac, I looked for hummingbirds but didn’t see them. Then, early one July morning, as I rose from bed and peered out my RV window, there it was—busy among the small orange flowers of a tall weed.
Towards evening, the hummingbird again returned to the strange plant and delighted me with its quick movements and amazing flying skills. Several times a day during the July trip to Lac, I had the good luck to watch the hummingbird as it collected sweet nectar outside my window.
I barely noticed the plant with its leopard spotted orange flowers.
But finally, in mid-August, when not only hummingbirds but flocks of other small birds hovered in the deep interior of this plant, I took notice.
What kind of weed gathers so much attention from the bird world? I decided to haul out my wildflower books and do some research.
I discovered it was a Jewelweed, also known as a Spotted Touch-Me-Not.
It likes wet areas, its stems are almost translucent and its sap can be used to soothe poison ivy. Last but not least, it is a very important nectar plant for hummingbirds
While I was watching hummingbirds and Jewelweeds, time passed.
My last visit to Lac occurred on Labor Day.
True to my neighbor’s prediction, the hummingbird was gone. The aging Jewelweed sagged with yellow leaves, its orange blooms faded and dropping.
Dark came earlier and I realized that summer was on its way out and autumn was taking over.
But I wasn’t ready. I’d learned much about hummingbirds and Jewelweed, but several other questions went unanswered.
What were the little red berries the chickadees were holding in their beaks?
Were the pileated woodpecker pair that hammered and pounded their way through the forest a parent and offspring or a pair?
What about the hawk-like bird that had startled a small flock in the underbrush?
The answers to these questions will have to wait for next summer.
So many miracles. So little time to appreciate them.
Summer passes into autumn
in some unimaginable point
of time, like the turning of a
leaf
Henry David Thoreau
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