Wings

All summer, Dean has been keeping the hummingbird feeder filled (one part sugar to four parts water; boil to dissolve sugar and cool completely), and the hummingbirds have been visiting regularly. I'm not sure if we have one mating pair -- I know there are two regular visitors and one has the clear coloring of a male ruby-throated humming bird and I am guessing that this is his mate -- or if we have more than that.

I finally managed to get out with my camera today while this one was feeding, but it wasn't easy to catch her.

We're going to see if we can plant more things that will attract even more hummingbirds, or maybe even hang a few more feeders. Anyone have any advice about this? Are more feeders likely to bring more visitors, or do we need more plants?

And in an entirely different category of wings, I can tell you that my brother Tony makes the very best chicken wings in the whole, wide world.

Here's his recipe:

2 lbs. chicken wings (prepped with the wing tip removed and discarded and the wings cut apart at the joint)
1 or 2 whole limes, juiced
About 3 ounces of Frank's Original Red Hot Sauce (we'd like to suggest that you really do use Frank's -- first of all, because it has a very nice flavor without the kind of keister-kicking heat of Tabasco and these wings are tasty even for people who don't want the big heat hurt*, and second of all because Tony is employed by the parent company)
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, minced
About half a cup of chopped fresh cilantro
[You will also need your favorite BBQ sauce, about 3/4ths of a cup, but you don't need it until you're ready to grill -- don't add it to the marinade.)

Rinse the wings and set aside. Combine ingredients (but NOT the bbq sauce) either in a shallow container with a lid or a zip-top plastic bag, and squish/swirl around. Feel free to play it loose and easy with the amounts of ingredients -- more of whatever you like (but probably not less of where you start from). Place wings in with the mixture, swirl to coat, and refrigerate 24 to 48 hours (you can also freeze the whole batch at this point to cook at a later date -- just defrost first). If possible, swirl 'em around or flip 'em a couple of times during the marinading time.

Drain wings and discard marinade. Grill over low heat, turning once or twice, for about 25 minutes. Turn heat up a bit and coat the wings with the BBQ sauce.
*At this point, if you do want heat to your wings, you can add hot sauce to the BBQ sauce.

Slowly cook the wings with the BBQ sauce on them, turning once, so that the sauce cooks and forms a nice crust on the wings -- don't just put the BBQ sauce on and then pull them off the grill, but watch carefully so they don't burn. We like ours with corn on the cob and grilled red potatoes. Yum.