Morning glories

IMG_0674Morning glories shoot up like something out of a fairy tale — Jack’s bean stalk or the roses that twined around Sleeping Beauty’s castle. One morning they’re a tiny cluster of heart-shaped leaves, the next they’re cresting over the garden gate — a wild tangle of blue trumpets and tightly twisted vines. Once they get established in a place they like — they’re not picky about soil, but tend to like sun — they’ll come back year after year. Mine seem to be particularly happy growing up between the sturdy legs of the sunflowers that I plant on the edge of the vegetable garden. It’s a joy to watch them unfurl on a summer morning— a crowd of dapper blue umbrellas rising above the rowdy green.  Here’s a poem by Mary Oliver on the subject.

Morning Glories

Blue and dark-blue
rose and deepest rose
white and pink they

are everywhere in the diligent
cornfield rising and swaying
in their reliable

finery in the little
fling of their bodies their
gear and tackle

all caught up in the cornstalks.
The reaper’s story is the story
of endless work of

work careful and heavy but the
reaper cannot
separate them out there they

are in the story of his life
bright random useless
year after year

taken with the serious tons
weeds without value
humorous beautiful weeds.

This entry was posted in Blog. Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to Morning glories

  1. Cheryl Sullivan says:

    Beautiful. One of my very favorite flowers.

  2. annette shear says:

    Thank you, Liza: the photo, your thoughts and those of the poet….
    I spent Wednesday morning in Central Park pulling the Virginia Creeper off the ground cover near to Cos Cob on the hill..they ‘re lovely white – as you call them – trumpets..but I am told they are invasive and I say: so what!

  3. Jackie Wein says:

    If your morning glories live up to your beautiful description of them, they will be a dazzling display of beauty.

  4. Emily Rosenthal says:

    How nice to have something so beautiful come about with such ease. Wondering if
    I could get them to grow in a flower box in Brooklyn.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.