Hummingbird Shower

We have difficult spot in our landscaping, a small area off the front patio, surrounded by tall fence on three sides, the patio on the fourth. Originally conceived as a place for a kitchen herb garden, right off the dining room, the area proved too shady to grow most herbs. A total about-face after abandoning the herb garden idea has turned this little nook into perhaps my favorite spot in the yard.

Rain Chain Fountain

I had been puzzling for two years what to do with this bed that abuts our favorite sitting place of all our many sitting places. This past winter, I concluded to Ann decided that I should design and build a rain chain fountain there to help mask some of the street noise.

So early this spring I set about collecting the parts and assembling the fountain. Really there was nothing tricky about it except getting a very small pump that could lift water seven feet off the ground. Easily enough done, but when I first turned the water on, the pump blasted the water into the top rain chain cup so hard that it ricocheted in a five-foot radius around the fountain. Oops! Installing a ball valve (the trick was finding one!) in the water line let me fine tune the flow.

Once done, I realized that we had some shade plants in our full sun back yard that were doing poorly and moved them into this shady bed, along with some additional ferns, hostas, cranesbills, and groundcovers. It has proved already to be a beautiful and calming shade garden, just a couple of months into its planting. We really cannot wait until next year when the plants expand to fill the space.

Our yard with hundreds of plants for nectar sources is intentionally a hummingbird oasis, and we do not tire of seeing the brazen aerial acrobats ever. In fact, hummers bring joy to our lives all year round here in the Willamette Valley.

I never imagined that this fountain would be of interest to the local Anna's Hummingbirds, but it is, and brings us even more joy, if that is possible. Each day the tiny creatures perch on the rain chain and take a shower, ducking their heads under the stream, then rolling the water down their backs, then fluttering their wings and splaying their tail feathers to dry them. Watch, in the 9-second video clip below.

Here are a couple stills of a female Anna's Hummingbird (we never see the males):

A lot of things in life have unintended consequences, some bad, some neutral, and some totally wonderful such as this.