Retroactive Remembering

I'm tempted to cheat on this blog a bit here, because I really ought to date my entry for May - when, according to the scribbled words in my notebook, this actually occurred - but really, it's September and I'm only now getting to this. It was a summer of too-muchness, and things that mattered fell too far to the sides of that unusually busy season, too busy to be fully present and to enjoy my most favorite of seasons. Leaves are changing and soon it will be a very distant thought. Next summer, though, next summer.

My purpose is that I wanted to record this year's arrivals for the archive:

Male ruby-throat first sightings: 4/18/13
Female ruby-throat first sightings: 5/15/13 (much delayed from last year)

My daughter's second-grade teacher-substitute for the next few weeks is a woman who was present for our rufous-hummingbird adventure, and with Z's homework, she attached a sticky-note asking if we'd seen them this year. We're still several weeks from the departure of the ruby-throats and the time when I first noticed the migrants last year. I am not-so-secretly hoping they will make another stop here, if they found their way south after leaving (though based on the indignity of the banding, I suspect the female may do anything possible to forget this place exists). It's tempting to think that our home may have imprinted on their flyway path, that we have developed something like a relationship.