Dear Reader:

Meet “Maddy” –  my first morning glory of the season. Isn’t she pretty….and I have always loved the name “Maddy.”

I was so thrilled by her unexpected appearance yesterday morning that I took several photos of her… as if she were a newborn….and I reckon in a way she is!

Immediately I started researching ‘morning glories‘ and discovered that, in many ways, they are just like human beings….meaning there are two sides to them.

Dave’s Garden has become my “go-to” resource for problem-solving in my garden. He always has a lot of common sense and backs up his suggestions with real-life experiences.

He was first introduced to morning glories (as a little boy) growing up on his grandparents’ farm which grew corn…and morning glories alongside the crop.

…”I grew up watching for the blooms of the corn that was growing in the garden plot down by the creek. From my perch in the swing on the front porch of my home high on the hillside, I looked for the pink, purple and blue flowers in the garden below. It happened every year. I ran to the kitchen where Granny Ninna was rolling out dough for biscuits, “The corn is blooming! The corn is blooming!”

“It isn’t time for the corn to bloom, honey. We’ve got to wait a few more weeks yet,” she said.

Those were the blooms of the morning glories, she told me, and they grew on the corn to keep the good bugs around and the bad bugs away. I much preferred thinking it was the corn that was blooming, but I liked the sound of the words: Morning Glories. What a pretty name for such a lovely bloom, much prettier than calling them corn blossoms.

“It wasn’t until I was older and wanted every plant I had known from my childhood planted in my own yard, that I started collecting morning glory seeds. Mom had said: “Don’t plant them near your daylilies, they’ll choke the bud right off.” Ninna said, “Don’t plant them near the Rose of Sharon, they’ll grow up that bush and it won’t never bloom.” And Aunt Bett said, “You grow them morning glories, chile, they’re good plants, and right pretty, too.” So now I grow morning glories, and you know who I listened to.

Like everything in this world, since the Garden of Eden….there is always a flip side to the most beautiful items in creation. Morning glories are no exception.

You have to plant them away from other flowers so they won’t choke them….a Jekyll/Hyde personality…so that is why Maddy and her other (soon to arrive) morning glory “friends” will stick together on the front porch…(away from other flowers) so they can play “nice.”

(My lilies are too beautiful this spring to subject them to the misbehaving “choking” morning glories…as pretty as their two colors would be together.)

You know how much I love stories and legends….the author, Dave, provides one he heard long ago…..

“I was told a story long ago, about a lovely Princess who lived in a far away land. She loved to sit in her garden of flowers, but she could only enjoy them in the cool of the morning, because she was a frail Princess and could not survive the heat of the sun. She never saw the beauty of the flowers that bloomed in the hot afternoons.

The delicate Princess was very sad, and as she returned to the palace knowing she would never see the afternoon blossoms, she began to cry. Her tears fell at her feet, and as they touched the ground, they turned into small seeds all along her path.

Once again the next day, the lovely Princess visited her gardens in the early morning, but oh how different her gardens were. Before her, twining all around the trees and climbing over the garden wall were beautiful flowers the likes of which she had never seen.

They were in blues and pinks, purples and yellows, and they grew above her head and touched her hair as she walked below. Her heart was full of joy and ever since that day, the lovely flowers were called Morning Glories, because they sprang from the tears of the beautiful Princess.

………………………..

Resource: http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/2595/#b#ixzz3YFuliI8L

I believe we can all identify with the double-sided morning glories…because down deep…we have to fight the darker side of our personalities and character.

The most wonderful thing anyone can say about another person is that he/she is the same inside and out…both spiritually and physically…inside and outside the home.

So until tomorrow…Help us Father…become the same person you want us to be…whether anyone is watching or not…

 Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Today is my favorite day.”  Winnie the Pooh

* It is my favorite day because we are having Eva Cate’s fifth birthday party….her “real” birthday is the 27th but this is pretty close and John’s parents (“my friends-in love“) W.T. and Joan (“BeBe” to the grandchildren) are here. Can hardly wait to see them!

Rain or shine…the party goes on…and just being together is enough for all of us!

Happy Birthday my eldest grandchild, Eva Cate….where has the time gone? “Loved you yesterday, love you still…always have…always will!”

* Trivia Question: What is the connection between Alice in Wonderland and morning glories?

In one scene from the Disney animated movie (Alice in Wonderland-1951) she discovers a beautiful garden in Wonderland where flowers live and sing and dance. The morning glories are called “Get- up- in- the morning glories”

Golden afternoon
From “Alice in Wonderland”
Music and Lyrics by Sammy Fain and Bob Hilliard

Little bread-and-butterflies kiss the tulips

And the sun is like a toy balloon

There are get-up-in-the-morning glories
In the golden afternoon

Here is the happy song written for the movie…it is roughly based on lyrics from a poem called “All in the Golden Afternoon”  written by Lewis Carroll…a memory of a golden afternoon when he created “Alice” and her “Wonderland.“

*(“All in the golden afternoon” is Carroll’s poem in his book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in which he recalls the afternoon on which he improvised the Alice in Wonderland story on a boat-trip from Oxford to Godstow, for the benefit of the three Liddell sisters, Lorina (“Prima”), Alice (“Secunda”) and Edith (“Tertia”).

This is such a happy song…raises your spirits…take a minute and hum along!

2:33 The Garden & All In The Golden Afternoon ( The Alice …

***( Kaitlyn changed her Linkedin profile picture and I told her she looked like Alice in Wonderland…so pretty (and honestly I know she could have done a much better job on “Alice’s’ solo…but then I am just a little bias!)

* Fred and Gin-g’s twins have just turned 32….Happy Birthday boys! Where has the time gone?