On the Porch

A kerfuffle of crows is meeting in the distance, squawks of indignation, squabble, a chase…murder?

A dove flutters for cover in the trees.

The hummingbirds are undeterred. Here is one, her wings a blur against the morning light, dipping that long beak over and over in the ruby red syrup of the hanging feeder outside. It’s soft morning here on the farm in Sautee, Nacoochee, Northern Georgia.

I’m sitting in the screened porch. It’s an enclosed deck, an outside room screened against the fecundity of insect life in this moist and lush corner of the Appalachians.

This is one of my favourite places in the world.

The cidadas sing on and on and on backed by the percussive beat of the crickets. Their beautiful background noise comes from each and every tree, a density of thriving insect life, omnipresent, a joyful tinnitus.

Another hummingbird darts down making tiny chirruping calls. She drinks, drops a miniscule white poop, drinks some more and returns to the safety of the trees. Her delicate green back could be just another leaf.

I cannot tire of watching the hummingbirds. Soon, one learns to tell them apart from their mannerisms at the feeder. One, my favourite, is a tiny girl who tucks herself close in to the flower-shaped vents in the feeder like a needy baby and chirps for every suck of sugar. She hangs around when all the others have gone. I wonder if they will leave her behind when they all fly off on their great migration to South America. The boys dart in boldly but often reverse to hang in the air doing a security check around the feeder before dipping those needle beaks in again. One of the girls is the ballet hummer. She does twirl flights away from the feeder, hovering in the garden, darting and dipping around the flowers, rising and making a circle then swooping back into the green camouflage of the trees. Sometimes there is a squabble and a fierce athletic chase suddenly erupts with two little birds dashing and zipping to and fro in zigszags and arcs across the garden and through the trees. Thrrripp, thrrrip is the sound they make at frantic high speed.

Usually the sound I hear from those tiny-fast beating wings is a deep thrum.

Watching these birds gives me profound joy.

A shimmering skink runs across the porch railing outside. It waves its sleek tail in extremely graceful gestures.

Black bumble bees almost as big as the humming birds forage in the flowers. They are so hefty that the petals fold beneath their weight.

Hover flies whip around the plants, golden against the morning sun.

A cat bird calls. A blue jay. Oh, and a cardinal.

A katydid chimes in.

As if all this drenching glory of lyrical beauty is not enough, there are the butterflies. Yellow ones twirl in late summer mating dances. Huge black ones clumsily amble through the air, fearlessly pausing to bat their grand wings and display their vivid blue markings. There are little blues out there, too. Skippers. All sorts. The great tree-enclosed garden is alive, alive-o.

And the cicadas sing on and on...

These days the garden’s fecundity is beginning to obscure the true view of the great Lynch mountain outside. There is only one part of the porch left where one can see it. Libby loves the encroaching tree growth and says that able-bodied people may go outside if they wish to look at the mountain. She also says that blocking the view as has happened would break her mother’s heart, but she just loves the shade of the trees.

I am able-bodied so I stand outside to observe the day’s progressions over the saddle of the mountain. Morning mists, soft and rising in wispy tendrils. Clouds, light and free, heralding another bright, warm day.

The weather has been hot and clear almost every day.

But, one day the clouds arrived dense with the promise of rain. And then the world greened out on a glory of needed water.

And humidity descended. A small price to pay.