TUSCUMBIA-I have an issue, I see plant, I want plant. I was contemplating looking for a 
plant anonymous group when my cousin Pat sent me some information about an ancestor Hermann Gusmus born in the late 1790’s. He was the gardener for the King and some Counts in Germany and traveled the world collecting plants for the gardens of his employers. He even has a primrose named after him. All right I said, it’s in the genes. I come by my affliction by inheritance! I love flowers and plants, it’s no secret. Combine that with photography and I’ve become a monster. I’m constantly taking pictures of something. Pat Shoemaker, wife of the Mayor of Tuscumbia asked one time if I slept with my camera, but I’m not quite that mental yet.
When I got home today, the first thing I did after putting up fifty pounds of black oil sunflower seed in storage containers and feeding the Hooligans was grab my camera to get pictures of some of my new daylilies and Japanese iris. I don’t like taking pictures of them after they’ve been cooked by the sun all day fading the color out, but a faded picture for reference was better than no picture.
I kept telling myself that you need to start mowing, or you’ll run out of daylight. 
Oh there’s another new one, just one more, and then another new one. I have to get that one also, just one more. While I was getting one last picture of a Japanese iris called Lady in Waiting, I heard the hum of a hummingbird. I looked up and it was an adult male and I swung my camera toward it. All of a sudden, it just did a nosedive into 
the surround daylilies. At first I thought it had died as it looked malnourished. I picked it up and his eyes were still opened. I took him over to the hummingbird feeder and tried to get him to drink. It just seemed like he was a lost cause. I kept running the sugar water (no red dye as it causes tongue tumors) and after awhile he started drinking and directly flew off and ran into the wall of the house and sat down on
the brick edging running under the siding. As I reached for him again to give him another drink, he fluttered off to a nearby flowering peach tree and sat for a while before going deeper into the canopy of the tree. Hopefully he is on the mend and will remember where the feeder is. Afterwards it was back to taking flower pictures, and eventually to mowing the front yard. Only three more acres in the back yard.
