Hummingbirds!

Not one sighting, not two, but three! this morning all before 8 am. I couldn't sleep (Surprise!), so I got out of bed at 5 am and was eating and making plans and reading a good book (Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner) when I heard the funny buzzing, chirping sound.

I looked up at my long neglected feeder and there it was! My second whole sighting for the summer. I grabbed my binoculars as quickly as I could and immediately identified it as a male Broad-tailed hummingbird. He was very easy to identify from that ruby red throat. Yay! After he left, I grabbed the feeder, gave it a quick scrub and refilled it with sugar solution that I had in the fridge just to make sure they had a clean supply.

Ten minutes later, I happened to glance up and saw another little hummer and noticed that it wasn't making a sound. A female! She looked as if she had stripes down her throat, so I was kind of thrown by that and wondering if she was the same type, but my research shows that she may just be an older female. Excitement indeed! At this point, Eric and Caitlin were waking up, so I got to share my thrilling news with them. The third bird was whipping across the yard as if it was looking for something before it found the feeder. At that point, it settled down to sipping, silently. Another female! Didn't appear to be the same one because of the lack of the long stripes down her throat.

Ahhh!

All three sighting occurred before 7:30 am, so guess where I will be over the course of the next few days at 7 am? It is not lost on me that my agastaches and scarlet gilia are finally in bloom, either. I've been in the very slow process of potting up the annuals that I'd grown from seed (for sales that never happened) this spring. I figure, if I can't sell them, I may as well pot them up for my own use and see if I can lure the hummers right onto the deck, for closer inspection. This will also give me an idea of how well these combinations grow together so that I might give them a try next year for sale.

It takes a lot of energy to put them together, too. I wind up breathless halfway through moistening potting soil and then knocked out by the time I've finished one pot. Here's what I've done, though:

• Pot 1: 3 Sundial portulaca (aka moss rose), 2 hyacinth bean vine, 1 Silver Falls dichondra, 1 cup and saucer vine.
• Pot 2: 1 scarlet sage, 3 heliotrope, 6 Sundial portulaca, 3 Silver Falls dichondra, 3 Riviera Blue lobelia.
• Pot 3 & 4: 1 1 cup and saucer vine, 3 Heather Queen agastache, 3 Sundial portulaca.
• Pot 5: 2 Mosaic coleus, 1 Dragon's blood coleus, 1 Scarlet Kong and 1 Red Kong Coleus.
• Pot 6: Haven't done this one yet, but I'm thinking about 3-5 scarlet sage, 3-5 heliotrope and 5-6 portulaca. The portulaca looks miserable because of some critter eating it where I had it sitting in the yard. The other portulacas looked pretty miserable, but seem to be bouncing back, now that they are in fresh potting soil and away from the things that munch.
• More pots as I think of them, until I run out of annuals or potting mix. Or breath.
  

I will take pictures of the pots later, they all look pretty darned spindly right now. Fortunately, being annuals, they will all grow like mad and fill in pretty seriously by the time the first frost rolls around in October or November. Now I'm off to go plant before it heats up more than I can bear.