I caught the tryst on camera a few years back, mere days past summer’s solstice: a secret encounter, in a pairing so mismatched, few ornithologists or botanists suspect it ever happens at all.
Nor did I, until I stumbled on the dawn scene in our asparagus bed, then a mass of six-foot ferns riddled with shy, green, solitary blossoms no more than a quarter-inch long. There, before heat or bees arrived, a female Anna’s hummingbird flitted from flower to flower, sipping. Usurping breeze...
