Goldfinches, and other Guests
visitors of the season
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While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
And day and night
Shall not cease. ~ Gen. 8:22
Drawing comfort from the certainty of the changing seasons is an ancient experience. The predictability of day and night, summer and winter, the orderly parade of the constellations, the regular return of comets, and the migration of beasts and birds guard our hearts against the threatening chaos that also exists in the world around us.
We live in a paradoxical world where things are both orderly and reliable and uncertain and treacherous. At the moment, we seem to be in a particularly uncertain and treacherous time.
If you are paying attention and are sensitive to the movement of spiritual energies, you will feel this deeply right now. I feel these shifts; I’d actually call them battles with profound impact. I’m in the midst of my own battle with what is stirred within me with every news cycle that pushes its way into my awareness despite my heroic efforts to limit being mired in the lies, conflicts, propaganda, and power struggles of the world.
Once again, Nature comes to my rescue, providing me with a safe haven and reassurance, bringing calm to my soul, bathing me with gentleness and peace, and washing away cares and anxieties.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~ Wendell Berry
We’ve had an unusually hot, humid, and rainy summer here in southern New England. While hot and humid are par for the course in July and August, they have been off the charts this year. Thus, my daily practice of beginning my day sitting outdoors has been curtailed, much to my annoyance.
But this week, the weather has shifted just a little, and I returned to my favorite routine of being outdoors in the early morning, and I was treated to a few beautiful interactions that prompted this post.
Every week of the summer seems to have its own predictable happenings, and this week did not disappoint.
For many years now, I have fed the hummingbirds not with feeders filled with sugar water but by planting flowers specifically aligned with their anatomy. This allows them to feed easily in the way they are naturally designed to. In the gardens, I have native Cardinal Flower, Blue Lobelia, Trumpet Honeysuckle, and quite a few varieties of Agastache. However, on my deck, where I spend the early mornings, I have, for at least a decade, filled planters with what I have observed to be their favorite flower, Cuphea.
Hummingbirds, like small Chihuahuas who act like great big dogs, are fearless, bold, and quite combative, which is astounding given their tiny stature.
Many hummingbirds come to my deck planters and know me well. They zip right past me and are not perturbed when I venture closer to watch them sipping nectar. Here is my predictable and regular experience with them, which occurs just about this time every year, and here is how it happened this year. I was sitting quietly on the deck, enjoying the green all around me, and a hummer suddenly appeared. He bypassed the planters full of glowing red flowers and headed straight for me. He stopped, hovered the way only hummingbirds can, dropped down several inches, and came even nearer. We were at eye level, and he was only about 15 inches from me. He tipped his head to the side and regarded me in a very particular way. He straightened his head, moved a little to the left, and then back to the right before dipping his head down like a bow and then flying off. This has happened to me so many times in mid-to-late August that I’ve come to regard it as a Thank You and Farewell from the hummingbirds. They will continue to be around for another month before migrating, and I expect I will have more encounters like this with other hummers before they finally leave for warmer parts. I have heard others tell similar stories. They swear that their hummers are coming to thank them for the food and bid them farewell for the winter.
Butterflies
Late summer is the season of big caterpillars and big butterflies. It’s now that the Tiger Swallowtails, Black Swallowtails, Spicebush Swallowtails, and Monarchs are everywhere in my gardens. Golden Alexanders, Dill, Fennel, Parsley, and Spicebush are essential if you want to encourage these late-summer visitors. Even if I didn’t have a calendar, I would know it was mid-August when the big butterflies were abundant.
Goldfinches
Goldfinches arrive in my area in April. They spend most of the summer in the woods, but in August, they come to the garden in droves, feeding off seeds rich in fat as they prepare to migrate south for the winter.
I love these cheerful yellow and black avian neighbors. They sit on my Agastache, plucking the petals for a snack, and perch on the echinacea and cut leaf cone flowers, feasting on their seeds. I always see them in pairs, and they are marvelous acrobats in the air.
Just after my encounter with the hummingbird, a pair of goldfinches descended on the planters on my deck just a few feet from me. They grasped onto the willowy stems of the cosmos as they swayed back and forth like circus performers. They explored the nearby zinnias and marigolds, plucked a few seeds, and grabbed a meal to go from whatever was nestled in the soil of the flower pots. In a flash of gold and black, they were gone.
Spiders
The large but docile Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia) and other species of orb weaver spiders also appear in August. She is yet another late summer guest in the garden, and her colors are similar to those of the Goldfinches. I notice this because the familiar Tiger Swallowtail also shares these colors. I sometimes wonder if they are meant to echo the yellow of the sun, symbolizing the summer season and the light half of the year giving way to the equinox and eventually the darkness and black of the long nights in winter. It is as if encoded into their coloration and the timing of their appearance, there is a secret message about the changing of the season, the movement of the wheel of the year, and the ever-changing (yet always the same) progression of life.
The Movement of the Seasonal Wheel
We are now two weeks into Lammas/Lughnasadh, the season that marks the in-between time separating the summer solstice and the autumn equinox.
These cross-quarter seasons, the in-between times, seem the most meaningful and potent. They are filled with secrets and wisdom, which we can unearth if we are willing to slow down, seek, and listen to the earth.
The Wheel of the Year is both a real occurrence in nature and a blueprint for our lives. The happenings in each season, the visible changes in nature, and the behaviors of birds, plants, and animals provide symbolic content that we can apply to our lives.
What season of life are you in? Do you know the signs? Can you feel the changes coming? Are you in between major life seasons?
The same kind of exploration can be followed in our spiritual lives. What are the signs of late summer in the spiritual life? What is fading? What is providing nourishment? What are you beginning to harvest?
The mystery of as above, so below, macrocosm, microcosm, Universe, Soul, heaven, and earth plays out on many levels. What we learn in one realm of reality is important for our understanding of other realities. This is why following the ever-changing yet ever-the-same Wheel of the Year has profound effects on us. It is simply a way into the greater mysteries.
Remember you can access all past essays using
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If you find yourself inspired and want to delve into seasonal energies through creative work, click the School of the Seasons Lammas Exploration & Experience HERE. It includes creative invitations you can use in your own creative work.
The Lion’s Gate Portal and Leo Seasons closes on August 22nd.
I’ve also updated last year’s Lion’s Gate Portal Guide with a new calendar page for 2024. You can get it HERE.
Get Ready for Virgo Season
If you would like to explore where you are now in this season of your life, what from the past is still influencing you, and what may be in store as the autumn seasons unfold and the year winds down, I’d suggest a Tarot reading.
Beginning at Virgo Season and through Samhain, I typically get many requests for readings. The autumn seasons seem especially suited to working with the Tarot as a tool for self-reflection and gaining a deep intuitive understanding of your life’s journey. I think it has to do with the thinning of the veil as the year slowly moves towards a close and our desire to put into perspective what’s happened since the beginning of the year, allowing us to shift gears and make informed changes before the year runs out.
From Lammas, August 1, through the autumn equinox, September 23, 45 min., Celtic Cross Tarot Readings are $79 for all Hedge Mystic subscribers; paid subscribers receive an additional 15 minutes for a full hour reading.
Learn more about my approach to Tarot and book your reading HERE.
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Jan, I really enjoyed reading this essay. We’re enjoying a very similar experience here in southeastern PA. My gardens are similar to yours and a thrilled to finally return to mornings with coffee on the porch after the oppressive, drowning experiences of July. I experience a greater contentment and sense of peace since “discovering” the wheel of the year and a more pagan approach to nature and life💚. Thank you for sharing your thoughts 💞
Oh those hummingbirds sounds wonderful! We don't have hummingbirds here in Australia but I do have a family of Goldfinches that have just returned from their winter sojourn (I'm not sure where but probably north or towards the coast where it's warmer). We are lucky to have lots of birdlife around, including the beautifully coloured parrots. We are slipping out of winter towards our own summer, so I am looking forward to the same kind of joys in 6 months time. Thanks for sharing your little slice of paradise.