Sara Alexander shares how a desire to remove cobwebs led to a pleasant discovery.
“It is time for spring cleaning”, I vaguely reproach myself, when I notice that the hog wire fencing around my deck is full of cobwebs everywhere. It is quite unbecoming. It is, in fact, a large mess, the kind of mess that my tidy mother would have immediately dispatched.
I look at it, wondering whether it would be better to hose off or tediously remove with a feather duster; then realizing how much time and mental focus either solution requires, I return to drinking coffee and add more urgent items to my ‘to do’ list.
A few days later, I see for the first time in the 25 years that I have lived here, a tiny brown hummingbird harvesting the cobweb silk. She has instantly transformed this evidence of my inadequate housekeeping to an accidental gift from me to her. And an equally accidental gift from her to my own grumpy, early morning heart.
While mesmerized by her aerial ballet, I notice a lot of movement in the raspberry patch below. I have never seen this many hummers all at once. They are brown, and plain, and appear to be sucking nectar from the early crop of berries.