Morning glory's fleeting flowers last just hours, but sunrise brings a new crop.
I should probably wait until we get to know one another better before I start going on about how gardens are a meditation on Life, and yes, I mean life with a capital “L” (smile). Still, it’s pretty difficult not to see concepts small and large — like growth, reinvention, death and rebirth — rooted in even the most modest of gardens.
Perhaps this accounts for why flowers, given at such joyous occasions as birthdays and anniversaries, are also what we reach for when grasping at a way to offer solace during times of loss and great sorrow.
One garden flower that brings home the fleeting nature of life, its beauty and its promise of renewal (dare I call it a metaphor?) is Morning Glory. As the moniker suggests, it blooms in the morning; vibrant, glorious. By evening those blossoms die, but new ones awaken with the sun.
I place Morning Glory around the outer edge of my balcony and it grows quickly, reaching out to grab hold of the iron railings and the webbing of net lights as it climbs upward. By mid-summer the plants form something reminiscent of a walled garden, covered with leafy green foliage and ethereal blue blossoms. Come to think of it, the variety I plant is called “heavenly blue.” Enough said.
So True!
I expect a bumper crop of return volunteers from the morning glory vines that I grew on a fence last summer. It was next to impossible to pull them down without scattering seed everywhere!