Every year, as spring begins to
blossom, I push the base of a wooden trellis into the fresh dirt next to our little
stoop. I watch as the small seedlings from the previous autumn poke their way through
the earth and unfurl. I weed the bed and water the small beings reverently. As
the vines grow, thin and spaghetti-like, I teach them to move towards the
trellis. They grow thicker, covered in short fuzz. The leaves grow bigger,
shaped like hearts. The larger they get, and the deeper the color, the closer
they are to budding.
I spend each morning in a gentle
meditation, wrapping the sweet vines around the trellis, and watching them
catch on over the days, until they wind themselves, in and out. The trellis is
the loom where nature and I create beautiful art together. As the weeks pass,
the vines become a green wall, offering us a sense of privacy; our nature
guardian.
When the buds first come, they are
tight little spirals, growing bigger each day. When I can see the color
threaded through them, I know they will open the next morning and it will be a
morning treasure hunt to see where the early blooms have hidden themselves.
The flowers are full and thick and
brilliant at dawn, staying to the shadows. The beautiful heart-shaped leaves
act like umbrellas, extending the lives of the blossoms by shading them. At mid-morning,
the blossoms glow with a luminescence that makes them seem otherworldly, as if tiny
portals are opening from within the heart of the flower.
This is my favorite time of day to
be in the garden, to be sitting on the stoop with a book and a notepad,
stirring my own creative juices in their wake. I watch as the bees frolic and
pollinate, leaving tiny dustings of pollen on the petals. I watch as the light
fades from the petals.
As the day lengthens and the sun
climbs in the sky, the morning glory blossoms grow weaker, their petals more
translucent. The softening flowers tear easily and stick to the leaves around
them. By mid-afternoon those that have survived curl in upon themselves. At
dusk, the day-old flowers drop unceremoniously to the ground below.
Every day in the world of the
morning glory is a new beginning, a new life. Their beauty doesn’t last because
nothing lasts. The nature of life is that it ends. That is the magic of the
morning glory for me. They are dead when dark descends, but tomorrow, there
will be life again.
In the fall, when the garden
withers, small buds of seeds are left behind on the browning vines. They will
dry and shrink and loosen their eggplant-colored seeds into the ground. There,
they will slumber through winter, waiting to emerge come next spring. So even
in their seasonal ending, there is hope. There is always hope. But for today,
under the last of summer sun, there is still beauty and joy.
[Originally published August 14, 2013; new photos.]
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