I saw a strange sight today--up in the sky, a blinding, bright, yellowish white ball. It was pleasantly warm and so brilliant that I could barely look at it! My neighbor reminded me that the name for it is "sun!" Temperatures have warmed and I can finally get my pale, leggy plants outside. I'll be careful, hummersteve!

I also built a greenhouse/cold frame contraption, about 4 1/2 feet long and a couple feet deep. It has two longer legs and two shorter legs, and it's sitting on our sloped driveway along with my crooked pot that I made in pottery class. It, too, is slanted so that it stands straight on the hill. I'm making a couple more "crooked" pots in pottery class right now to accomodate some more hummer vines--Mina lobata, and Manettia. I'm reminded of that nursery rhyme about the woman with the crooked house. I could add a verse or two about crooked greenhouses and crooked pots! I know we've got at least one more 40 or 50 degree cold snap, so I want to be ready with that little greenhouse.

According to the migration map, the very first hummers are at our doorstep. Those of us who are just west of the Appalachians have a tough time each spring. It takes so dang long for those birds to get here. They populate the northern midwest and up into New England before they get here. For goodness sakes, most years they get to Minnesota (significantly north of us and colder) before they reach here. I think it's an accident of geography. Poor Penny up in western New York will probably wait even longer than me. She seems to be in that same "delayed zone" that I am in.

Spring is finally in the air, and I am trying to keep up the faith that they will soon be showing up again. I just keep refreshing that nectar, waiting, and watching. Please come, little guys and gals, the garden is lonely without you.