Still Life With Hummingbird

This little guy was sitting on the beak of a streletzia for such a long time that I became curious. I've never seen one sit for so long, grooming itself with determination. I think it must be a juvenile, but I'm no expert. 

I loved all the responses to my clothesline question. I realize that power here is generally a lot less expensive, especially for us as we have solar panels. The power company requires us to send the power generated by 
our solar panels to the grid. They pay us a certain amount for it but they also charge a fee for 'processing' it. Now they want to raise the processing fee and lower the amount they pay for the power, because they have already emerged from two bankruptcies and are facing huge reparations from the fires their long neglected equipment has caused. None of it makes any sense but we're glad we put in a battery so we can store and use our own power. 

 Electricity is considered much better for the environment than gas according a recent article in the paper, but I fail to see how this can be  so, considering the enormous ecological toll  huge wildfires have  caused here. Electric appliances are being encouraged, I think maybe even mandated in new homes, but whoever sets the building codes seems to have forgotten that every year the power company turns off the power to prevent their equipment from starting wildfires. Most people have back up generators which usually burn highly flammable and polluting diesel .

All that in order to say that in our case, our clothes are dried by the sun whether we hang them on the line or put them in the dryer....I don't think there is any way to capture the fresh air smell of clothes dried in the direct sun. I think there is something to be said for the disinfectant properties of the sun as mentioned by New Zealand BlipperV1k1. And Blipper annejohn  summed up all the pros and cons very well.

I preface the following comment with the fact that we have always managed to avoid living in places with homeowners' associations but they do seem to control a lot of  decisions which I think should be left up to individual homeowners, Many of them outright ban the use of outdoor clotheslines.  

Thanks to everyone who sent in their thoughts. I enjoy a good conversation about something relatively non-controversial....