Hummingbird Garden

We celebrated Abigail’s 6th birthday this week. I’m amazed at how fast my children are growing right before my eyes.

My big girl

Pure excitement at the approaching cake

Abigail is an avid animal lover. She is very good with all of our farm animals and is always trying to catch wild animals to observe and try to care for. We considered getting her a small pet for her birthday, but decided instead to help her put in a hummingbird garden. Ever since she went over my mom’s house a few months ago and fed the hummingbirds out of a hand-feeder, she’s been fascinated with wanting to try that herself. It takes a great deal of patience to sit very still outside over a period of days, weeks or months to get a hummingbird to trust you enough to do that. However, the first step is putting up a feeder or planting a garden to see if there are even any hummingbirds in the area.

She was thrilled with the idea! We looked up the types of flowers that attract hummingbirds in her new hummingbird book and then went to the nursery to pick a few of them out.

We purchased a feeder for her to hang up, too.

She worked really hard to put all of her new plants in and then watered them like a good gardener would do. Since we couldn’t afford to purchase all of the different types of flowers this year, Abigail decided that early next spring she will start some of the other species indoors. Seeds are so much more affordable than full grown flowers and there will be no limit to the different kinds or the amount that she can grow herself!

 

 

The day after she planted the flowers and hung the feeder, she already had visitors to her little garden.

 

We’ve been enjoying their visits every day since. Hummingbirds are such fascinating creatures and so much fun to watch!

 

Hopefully, at some point Abigail will be successful at hand-feeding her hummingbirds just like Grandma!