Late July, a blue sky, bluebird kind of a day, cool and sunny after a week of mounting heat and humidity. The day feels like a reprieve, not just from the heat but from a summer’s worth of climate misery: wildfire smoke that choked the sky and my lungs, the storms that tore huge limbs from my old maple tree. Around the world forests burn, crops fail, floods wash away homes and livelihoods. This summer feels like a turning point, a time to acknowledge that the climate change so long predicted is here. Today, though, such thoughts are swept aside as I celebrate the beauty that is here and now. 

Seemingly out of nowhere, the young hummingbirds have appeared. They’ve probably been here all along, tucked into their tiny nest, but now they have fledged and are zipping around the garden from flower to flower, exploring their new world. One has claimed the patch of Salvia right outside my window, and I watch his tiny body hovering in front of the blue-black flowers, his long bill probing deeply into their trumpets. For an hour, I focus only on the sapphire flowers, the emerald glitter of his body in the sun, his darting flight.

Behind the Salvia the wrecked limbs of the maple await their date with the chainsaw. I briefly consider replacing the wounded tree with a huge flowerbed, turning my garden into a hummingbird wonderland filled with vibrant blooms and the jewel-like birds. Then I think of the shade the tree still provides, the squirrels who make their winter nests in its branches, the red-bellied woodpecker who drills into its crevices, the hawk who uses it as a hunting post. I wonder when I’ll be ready to say goodbye to the tree, and hello to the garden that will replace it.

 Change is a constant. In a month the hummingbirds will be gone, heading south for the winter, many of them making a perilous journey across the Gulf of Mexico in the heart of hurricane season. Meanwhile, I see a house sparrow gathering straw; it seems he plans on repairing the nest in preparation for a third brood, even as the youngsters from the most recent brood still quiver their wings and beg for food in the willow shrub.

 One bird will travel across continents, the other will live its life in my garden. I delight in them both, and in the fact that I’ve created this little green oasis for them in the middle of endless corn and soybean fields. I suddenly grasp the power of creation, of taking action to make things better; this is the hope we all need for the future.