Sometimes it seems like summer will never end here along the Texas coast. Yesterday afternoon the temperature was pushing 97° according to the weather station on the mantle. I checked with the WunderGround and the heat index was almost at 110°.
For the last few weeks I have been spending the early morning hours (the ones I once used to muse here), sitting in the rocker on the front porch with my morning coffee. The morning temperatures are moderating enough to make it not totally unpleasant out there…Barely. Though, last week, when Hermine came ashore down at the bottom of Texas, the day feel before the rains started was miserable. It was humid and in the 80’s at daybreak. Happily, once the rains began the temperature fell into the low 70’s.
Another of the reasons for the morning muses on the porch is that for the last few weeks we have been seeing hummingbirds coming to the feeder out there. It has not happened before in all of the years we have lived here.
Each year I would clean out the feeders and fill them and hang them out and never see a single hummer. It had become something of a joke around here. Then one morning I was standing out on the porch and heard a buzzing sound to my left. When I looked over there was a red throated hummingbird checking out the feeder. Since I knew the nectar had to be old, I quickly took it into the house to clean and refill before I rehung it on the porch.
Since that first day it has become a regular parade of hummers. Chasing each other away from the feeder. I actually added a second feeder to ease the territorial battles…Not that it really helped.
So mornings I sit with my coffee, watching the world come awake around me. School buses pass by, folks travel to work, my neighbor across the street goes for breakfast and coffee at the local diner. The business across the road unlocks their gate and the employees gradually show up for the days work. The hum of traffic from the highway a quarter of a mile away rises and falls as the rush hour ebbs and flows. Occasionally, a freight whistle will announce the presence of a train along Highway 6 not a mile away. Squirrels play tag in the oaks around the yard. Woodpeckers and Jays raise a fuss as they search for food in the trees. When the morning heat approaches 80° I quit the porch and turn on the interwebs inside the house…And my day really begins.
From my seat here in the kitchen though, I can still see the hummers coming and going from the feeder out front at the opposite end of the house.
