I Love It !!!

This time yesterday morning, I was panicked and frantic. Company had arrived and I found myself unprepared. Their arrival, anticipated for some time, sent me into the kitchen hurriedly opening cupboards while simultaneously flipping on the stove top eye. The hummingbirds had caught me unaware!

We were sitting on the deck, Jerry was mid-sentence recounting something yard related when I suddenly jumped up and shouted, "They're here." A good sized emerald hummingbird sat on the barren oak leaf hydrangea branch and I was off and running to the kitchen (truly) opening cupboards first to find the best pot for boiling the sugar water on which they feed and second to try to remember the location of the many feeders we hang through summer, the suction cups by which they hang, the little ant motes that usually keep out the ants but not the bees. Hummingbird feeding like keeping the raccoons out of the bird feeder is for us at least high maintenance but this did not stop my exuberance.

Feeders found and sugar water cookin' I shouted: I love it! emphasis on all three words.

We've my nephew Christian to thank for lovin' it. Now nineteen and not prone to such exclamations, when he was fourish he would randomly and often shout, "I love it! to the simplest of things. Over these many years, we've discovered we, two fifty-something adults, are imprinted and prone to exuberantly shouting "I love it!"

This hummingbird induced exuberance gives me pause to ponder the places where such energy is found in our society? My first thought produces a cringe. It's of football and how during my first and only one of two Titan's games a multitude of years ago, a fan behind me yelled "Kill em" quite exuberantly. Mid-April Lady Gaga fans will fill downtown and I'm certain something kin to exuberance will be found there. And it won't be the 'kill em' kind. At April's end, the Music City Marathon will find exuberant participants and fans alike lining the streets of Nashville.

What's so exuberance inducing about hummingbirds for me? I love Nature. This time of year in particular is like homecoming. All my children come home as flowers, hostas and ferns emerge from Earth's depths and the hummingbirds return.

Just last weekend, I saw penned on my calendar for this month: April 10th, 2010-Hummingbirds returned. They have returned this year on the very same weekend.

In the swiftly changing technological world in which we live, there is a constancy residing in Nature, the constancy seen in January's migrating Sandhill Cranes, April's hummingbirds and green leaves and October's turning leaves.

Nature whispers: Listen. This is the stuff of miracles. It's all there inside.

I LOVE IT ! What about you?

-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 10 April 2011