Frogtime

September seems to be the time for frogs in the garden. All along the stone walls, in the Brick Path garden(1), there are little dark green leopard frogs, spotted with brown , and with two handsome gold lines down their backs. When I come near, these hop importantly out of the way, into the tangle of collapsing plants at the back of the beds. I like having them in the garden – they eat bugs – but there’s no way of letting them know that.

The best frog, though, this year, is an extremely small tree frog that has made his home on the Zephyrine Drouhin. This is the incredibly generous and forgiving rose-colored climber on the porch wall. It’s an awful spot, roots cramped between the porch foundations and the cellar door, on a wall that definitely faces north, but this rose, may her tribes increase, doesn’t seem to mind. This year she has sent a long, graceful shoot diagonally up the trellis, about ten feet long. A few days ago I examined her leaves, some of which were laced by a caterpillar, and I saw the tiny frog.

He’s small enough to fit very comfortably sideways on a rose leaf, and he sits with his front feet tucked neatly underneath him, as though he were carrying a muff. He’s a very pale greenish tan, nearly translucent, with dark eyes, each with a short dark stripe that goes directly through it. On his back is a vague dim pattern, like drowned islands seen from above. The first time, not knowing he was there, I scared him, and I watched him leap seven or eight inches – seven or eight times his length – to another leaf, stretching out his strange rubbery extra-terrestrial fingers and toes to clutch the next perch. I leaned down to look at him, and then he sat motionless, the fingers hidden beneath his belly, his dark striped eyes open, and his pale throat palpitating, very fast, a quick hurrying rhythm of pulse.

I watched him for a long time, to see if the rythym would slow when he was less alarmed, but watching a wild animal is like the physics principle (Heidegger’s?) : by watching them you change them, so I’ve never found out whether or not the pulse would slow.

He’s been there, somewhere on the rose trellis, each day when I come out, though sometimes it takes a little while to find him. Yesterday he was on the trellis itself, sitting completely still and composed, clamped ont o the perpendicular surface, his pale head facing straight up, the drowned islands on his back, his bright unnatural eyes slightly lidded.
I couldn’t see the pulse.

The Hummingbird Wars

Along the eastern edge of the meadow here I put in clumps of beautiful dark red beebalm, the native monarda. They’re upright plants, with tall stalks and dense moppy heads. In July and August these glow against the dark shadowy woods beyond.
I planted them for the hummingbirds. Hummingbirds love red flowers, and I love hummingbirds. We have native red beebalm, the red and pink native honeysuckle, lonicera, and the native trumpet vine, campsis radicans, though this takes ten years to bloom, we learned after planting it. We put it in seven years ago, and so far it has busily covered the walls of the garage in a thick green tapestry, but no more. It seems to be holding out for the decade.
My bird book describes the hummingbird family – Trochilidae – as the smallest birds. The only ones we get here in Maine are ruby-throated hummingbirds, Archilochus colubris. A learned friend told me that Archilocus was a Roman soldier famous for his retreats, during battle: apparently the hummingbird is the only bird who can fly backwards.
The shining blur of wings rotates in both directions. My learned friend told me, too, about sitting on a screened-in porch one afternoon, reading, when he heard the sound of a sudden small collision. He looked up to see a hummingbird, his long tiny beak stuck fast in the screen. He was momentarily impaled, the delicate proboscis caught in the minute metal grid. But it was only for a moment: the bird’s wings began to blur again, and he hummed rapidly backwards like the Roman and was gone. (The Archilocus incident explains those tiny mysterious gaps that appear in metal screens. I’d always wondered what produced them – very powerful mosquitoes, muscling their way inside?)
My bird book also describes the hummingbirds as “pugnacious,” and though it saddens me to say this about a friend, they are. They are ferocious. I will also admit, caught up by candor, that most of the ones I see around here are not males but females – throats a dull green, not ruby. It’s the females that fight. They are Amazons, fierce warrior queens with volcanic tempers and belligerent manners.
One afternoon I watched a hummer moving from blossom to blossom among the sorberias along the fence by the house. These graceful shrubs have long white plumy blossoms and lacy green leaves. It was a pretty sight, the tiny bird poised and motionless in the air, regal, perfectly erect, her wings shimmering magically, her green back glittering and iridescent. Focused and intent, her movements mysteriously abrupt, she moved from white plume to white plume. As she hovered and rose and dropped and hovered, I became aware of a noise, and of motion nearby. There was a tiny, shrill, “Chick, chick, chick,” and something swirled in the air over her. It was another hummer, small as a green bee, moving in sweeping arcs over the first bird’s head, each arc lower than the one before. She swooped over the head of the feeding bird, the arc dropping with each swing, like th ominous sweep of an executioner’s axe. “Chick, chick, chick,” she shrieked homicidally. The first bird slid sideways; she vibrated back and forth in alarm; finally she ducked under a wide branch of sorberia. She hovered there, assaulted by the wild cries of the invader, until she rose suddenly and zoomed off into the open spaces of the meadow, and she was gone.
They do this all the time.
They must have something else to do in the mornings, somewhere else to be, but in the late afternoons I find them at the edge of the meadow, by the beebalm. There’s a birch tree next to one stand of flowers, and a big mass of bay bushes behind it. The hummingbirds zoom in and out of the flowers, perching, suddenly still, on a branch, then shifting into motion again, as though they were casting a quick magic spell on themselves. They rise up among the flowers, heads raised, beaks poised, wings invisible. Then a new one arrives, instantly outraged, and they zoom at each other, buzzing furiously. They pursue each other at high speeds, from beebalm stand to beebalm stand. “Chick, chick, chick!” they scream, in high, tiny voices, wild with fury. They’re always in a state, those microscopic hearts always beating a frenzied tattoo of rage, faster than we can imagine.
Once last year I was standing on the porch, watching a hummingbird feeding on the tall plume poppies next to the fort door. He hung in midair among them, probing each flower delicately with his beak, his wings shimmering in the sunlight. I stood nearby, watching. Finishing, he moved on, from the flowers toward me. He hung in the air in front of my face, shifting slightly, a bright iridescent shimmer in the air. He was very close, no more than two feet from my face, and his bold dark gaze was fixed on me. Under his long fierce stare I began to feel odd, then faintly uneasy, as though this tiny, satiny feathered thing might contain – what? some threat? I stepped back instinctively. He peered at me a second longer, made an avian executive decision, then sped away. It wasn’t until I went back inside, past the mirror in the front hall, that I realised how I looked to a hummingbird: the frames of my glasses are bight red. In the dim light of the porch, it must hav seemed interestingly like two red rims of blossom. It was a flower he didn’t know, but one possibly worth investigating, worth piercing with his long pointed bill, drilling into it as though it were a metal screen. When the blossoms retreated nervously into the darkness he lost interest, though, and hummed swiftly off into the sunlight, looking for other realms to conquer. Much as I love hummingbirds, I was just as glad not to have gotten to know that particular one any better.
I still love them, though. I like having them around. I like finding them, in the late afternoons, perching among the beebalms, waiting for a fight to get into.

The Necklace

One of the great pleasures of the garden lies in its textures – the lace of ferns, the velvet of roses, the smooth fluted curves of hosta. Boxwood’s texture has a particular appeal, especially now – September - when everything else is in decline. Box is still dense and vigorous, the leaves bright dark green and shiny, the surface of the shrub dense and springy, somehow luxuriant.

My back door is flanked by two pyramidal boxes, five feet high (1). Every time I go in and out I pass this stout reliable presence, the dry green thicket of tiny leaves. There are tall willow trees nearby, and their pale narrow leaves and fine whippy twigs often drop into the dark green of the box, which is why I almost didn’t notice the casual strip of brown, flung across the shoulder of the box this morning. A long looped line, in smooth curves, like a necklace dropped by the gods.

It was a snake. Its body drew a narrow sinuous line through the leaves. It was dark grey, nearly black, with pale bold stripes running the length of it. I could see the narrow tapering tail, curled inward, but the head was invisible, inside the box. For long moments the snake was motionless among the leaves, and I began to wonder if it were dead. Then I saw a faint thickening swell, like a swell of water in the ocean, and then, magically, the long line of it moving without moving, slid inside the deep green interior of the box and was gone.

Later, when I came outside he was there again. His head was stretched out into the air. His jewelled, brilliant eyes were black against the clean stripes. We stared at each other without moving, and then his mouth flashed open. Flickering suddenly into the air like electricity was his narrow threadlike tongue. It was dark glistening carmine at the roots, glistening black at the forked end. The forked end snapped like a banner. He flicked it, flicked, flicked again, staring straight at me like a hypnotist. Then he stopped, still staring, and drew his head in and turned in on himself, collecting himself in loops. He slid away, deep inside the beautiful dense green plush of the boxwood.