Tag Archives: Morning Glories

164. Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love — that makes life and nature harmonize. ~George Eliot

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Delicious autumn!
My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns.
~George Eliot

**I was hoping you could see that the morning glory below, heavy with dew after the rain, was an awesome, pink delight to behold, but the image is too smalll here for you to see its alluring sparkle.

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Northerly winds in the night blew our gray, rain-bearing clouds away, and the day dawned under a fresh, China blue sky.  Layers of dust that had been blowing in on southerly winds for weeks were washed away, sent back to the soil from whence they came.  As a result heaven’s dome along with the landscape looked sparkling clean and pristine.  In the day’s early light growing green things shined greener, new growth pushed up on rose canes, seedlings appeared in soil once parched and cracked by summer’s fiendish assaults.   Wildlife, though always smaller in number in October, flew, crawled, and buzzed with renewed energy and enthusiasm in the aftermath of the recent slow, soaking rains.  And so with a bit of an almost frosty nip in the air, this day evolved into our first quintessential, autumn day.  How, then, on such a day, could the early call to venture out in the yard, camera in hand, have been ignored?  Or how could it have been a surprise that the vignettes I found were so exquisite that all I could muster, with eyes blurred by joyful tears, was praise for the Holy One whose presence amidst the glory was sweetly palpable?

Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind.  Let them sacrifice thank offerings and tell of his works with songs of joy.  ~Psalm 107:21-22  ✝

133. My little hut is newly thatched, I see, with blue morning glories. ~Kobayashi Issa

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A morning glory at my window
satisfies me more
than the metaphysics of books.
~Walt Whitman

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I love the tendrils vines use to climb as well as the vertical interest the vines themselves add in a garden.  Scrambling upwards enables the twining plants to reach sunlight with a minimum investment of energy rather than investing their energy in a lot of supportive tissue, and many of them can be easily started from seed or even better some easily reseed themselves from year to year.  Vines are not fussy plants that require special care, and as long as they are watered regularly, some of them even thrive through the hottest parts of summer growing strong in the garden’s web of life until the first freeze finishes them off.  For me one of the best reasons for adding vines in a garden is that some of them are hummingbird magnets.

The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy.  ~Psalm 65:8  ✝

128. The very act of planting a seed in the earth has in it something beautiful. I always do it with a joy that is largely mixed with awe. ~Celia Thaxter

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Every friend is to the other a sun,
and a sunflower also.
He attracts and follows.
~Jean Paul Richter

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Over the years, I tried starting a few things from seed but never on a large scale.  Then a year or so back after I pulled up and out two poorly producing raised beds, I claimed the space beneath them that fall as seed beds.  In one I sowed poppies and in the other I sowed larkspur and was thrilled at the success of both the following spring.  After the poppies and larkspur were spent that spring, I sowed several types sunflowers in their stead so that I’d have homegrown food for my birds during the winter months.  Again I had great success, and so now, though not on as large a scale, I have several places around the yard where I reserve space for sowing morning glories, poppies, larkspur, and sunflowers.  And I have to say that the process still affects me in the same way as Celia Thaxter.  There is just something so terribly awesome about putting a tiny, almost nondescript seed in the ground and then after a period of watering and waiting discovering the tiniest of green shoots emerging from the blank soil.

The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.  ~Genesis 1:12  ✝

123. Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. ~Melody Beattie

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Be glad of life because it gives you the chance
to love,
to work,
to play,
and
to look at the stars.
~Henry Van Dyke

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Morning glories always brighten a day and fill it with reason enough for hopefulness and gratitude.

Sing to the Lord with grateful praise; make music to our God on the harp.  ~Psalm 147:7  ✝