John Tabb wrote:   "A flash of harmless lightning, A mist of rainbow dyes, The burnished sunbeams brightening From flower to flower he flies."   He’s talking of course about the hummingbird.     Gardeners are enthralled by hummingbirds and will do next to anything to attract them to their garden.     One of my happiest memories is being in my garden, working away, when I suddenly felt a little displacement of air on my cheek and I turned and found myself staring right at a hummingbird. Pure magic.   Hummingbirds find food entirely by sight. If they see red, they zoom in for a closer look. This is why all the hummingbird feeder‘s have that "McDonald’s cherry red" as a prominent feature of the feeder.   On the other hand, the liquid it does not need to be red. Remember that.   You can make your own simple nectar by combining one part sugar to four parts water in a sauce pan and then make a simple syrup by boiling it for two minutes. Allow the mixture to cool before before you fill your feeders and replace it every couple of days.   And whatever you do, don't add anything else to your syrup. Do not add red dye and do not add honey; both are harmful two hummingbirds.     And yes, you may not see them. Hummingbirds are notoriously sneaky. They can feed every 15 minutes without you even knowing, unless you’re sitting right there or you happen to have your nest cam trained on your feeder.     Finally, hummingbirds love some plants more than others. They are especially fond of honeysuckle. Their favorite flowers have to meet to their color criteria – red, red orange or pink blossoms.   John Audubon called them "glittering fragments of the rainbow".         Brevities #OTD   Today is the day that the botanist Carl Peter Thunberg died in 1828.   Thunberg has been called by many names – the father of South African botany      Thunberg had actually been taught by Carl Linnaeus and Linnaeus encouraged him to continue his work in Paris and Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, Thunberg met the Burmans, a father and a son, and both botanical experts.   From there, Thunberg joined the Dutch East India Company and he botanized in South Africa for three years. After South Africa, he traveled to Japan where he stayed for a little over a year.     Before he went to Japan, Thunberg needed to learn Dutch. The Japanese were not about to convert to Christianity and so they had closed the country off to all European nations except for Holland in order to learn more about medicinal plants.   When Thunberg went to Japan he was posing as a Dutchman instead of a Swede.     In fact, during the 18th century, Thunberg was Japan's only European visitor and his Flora japonica published in 1784 was a revelation to botanists around the world.    During his time in Japan, Thunberg discovered the Easter Lily growing near the city of Nagasaki. He also discovered Forsythia in Japan and he named it to honor William Forsyth.       #OTD  Today is the birthday of the Canadian botanist Julia Wilmotte Henshaw who was born on this day in 1869. Remembered as one of British Columbia‘s leading botanists, Henshaw studied for a bit with the botanist Charles Schaefer and his wife Mary Schaefer Warren. The two were surprised when Henshaw published Mountain Flowers of America in 1906. Rumor had it that the Schaefers may have felt Henshaw had co-opted their work, but another perspective would be that Henshaw was simply more driven and she was definitely an experienced author. In either case, the work needed to be published and by that time Henshaw had already written a few books so she was not slow to publish.  In any case, she went on to publish two additional volumes on Canadian wildflowers.     Henshaw was a founding member of the Canadian Alpine Club.   Henshaw had a regular column called The Note Book that was featured in the Vancouver Sun newspaper where she was known as gentle Julia by her fellow journalists.   Her weekly column is a delight to read even today.     In April of 1937, she w