the coolest thing ever in a garden

I went out to my little garden mound this morning to water and pick tomatoes. It's not a regular garden, just a big heap of organic mulch that my land-people offered me to use as a garden this summer. Maybe six feet in diameter, I've planted it (with SK's help and encouragement) with tomtatoes, cucumbers, sunflowers, marigolds, lettuce, basil, arugala and kale. The kale hasn't done so well and the lettuce has long since flourished and been eaten. Now the tomatoes are ripening and the cucumbers are tiny, crooked fingers, doubling in size every two days.

But all that aside, the coolest thing ever in a garden just happened to me while I was watering. I was standing, very still, holding the hose (with my thumb jammed in the hole to help distribute the water better) when I heard the thumping whir of a hummingbird. At first I couldn't see it -- but then it appeared, hovering just over the top of the tomato to my right. That little, shimmery-green hummingbird hovered within the six-foot diameter of my garden for probably two full minutes!

It seemed most interested in the water arcing out of the hose. I stood stock-still, I didn't even glance to see where all that water was landing, as the teeny bird zipped towards the water, then backed away, then towards, then away. I've never had such an extended, close-up view of a hummingbird before in my life! It was amazing. Throughout the encounter, he was never more than three feet away from me, and often he was closer, mesmerized as he was by the hose. At one point, he hovered two-inches from my hand, making quick dashes for the water -- so close, I thought he might actually land on my wrist!

I watched his tiny, green body which had a sheen like an oil-slick -- his long, black beak and the bright red patch on his throat. I watched his wings, just a blur, and imagined how fast his little heart must beat, how wildly his blood must flow to keep those wings beating at such a crazy pace. I wanted him to land on me just so I could see him still, but suddenly, after a last dash into the water, he zipped away. I saw him land in a tree on the other side of the fence around the backyard and I imagined he was watching me with the water, thinking about returning, but he didn't. I finished watering and he stayed in his tree.

Such a magical thing -- for a creature like that to suddenly just enter your space and change your mood, then leave. If I'd been born in another culture, something so auspicious might be considered to carry great meaning in my life -- there might even be celebrations or rituals or vision quests proscribed for such an event. As it is, I come in and sit down at my computer to write about it -- next to my computer on my desk is a paper for school I need to work on and a stack of mail I need to deal with and I feel, in this moment, that the world I *do* live in has no space for the magic of the hummingbird in my backyard.

I want to tell the stack of mail, "Hey, don't you understand? A hummingbird just chose *me* for a few minutes. I've got magic in me today, I'm too good for a stack of mail!" So far, the stack of mail doesn't care. The stack of mail reminds me of a path towards a different kind of life that I chose when I went to law school and now, if I want, I'll have to figure out for myself what meaning a hummingbird has for me, and if I need to switch paths, I'll have to do it myself. The culture that would otherwise shape and guide me is silent, if not completely absent.