I have always loved hummingbirds, and seeing them in my garden has been one of the sure signs that the spring has come for many years. I don't spend very much time in the garden, so usually I am lucky if I see a hummingbird once or twice a season. After all, they move so quickly, and feed so rapidly, that you have to be looking at just the right moment to see one! So when my wife decided to get a humming bird feeder, I thought it might be a good idea. I was a little bit apprehensive, because I was worried that humming bird feeders would stop them from pollinating the flowers like they needed to. I didn't need to worry. Apparently, even if you have a feeder in your garden, the hummingbird will still also stop at the flowers for nectar.
We went down to the local garden store and looked, but none of the hummingbird feeders looked quite right. They were all very simple and utilitarian, not decorative enough to fit in our garden. You see, flowers are only half of gardening. The other half is having the right accents. In our garden, everything is pretty ornamental. We have statues, a flagstone path, and even a small wrought iron fence. We decided that a blown glass humming bird feeder would be the perfect thing to complement our decor.
We checked by all the local glass shops, but we couldn't find the right humming bird feeder for us. Some of them were pretty nice, but they were mostly factory made. They didn't have the individuality that we craved. Finally, we found the perfect birdfeeder in the most unlikely of places: the flea market. It was absolutely beautiful, and it was also pretty cheap. For 25 dollars, we had a gorgeous and functional hummingbird feeder.
I don't know what I'd been expecting. I think on some level, I had imagined that the garden would immediately be flocked by hordes of hummingbirds. Needless to say, this was not the case. As a matter of fact, it was a week or two before we even saw one of them check out the humming bird feeder. Nevertheless, once they discovered it, they came back for more. Nowadays, we have a full blown hummingbird garden. Barely a day passes by when I don't see one of the birds stopping by to take a drink from the feeder and a taste from the flowers.
5:18 PM