Dear Reader:

This is the first year I didn’t have two big barrels of morning glories…already climbing fence trellis… that I would buy each spring at Ace Hardware. (But then no one expected COVID either…and not being able to go to ACE for my annual spring supplies.)

Still…the morning glories were not about to be “undone” …they returned…not on the fence trellis as I had hoped but in a pile of a mixture of bushes and weeds… they made their home…and are just beautiful!

I love to go to Dave’s Garden on the internet…he shares common sense gardening tactics and  he is  always ready with a story to accompany a plant or flower.

*Here is a tidbit memory from his boyhood …experiencing morning glories in all their beauty.

…”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 said: “Don’t plant them near your day lilies, 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.

It is the way I feel too…it is just something about that indigo color that melts my heart…it is SO pretty to me. And because they only bloom for part of the day…that time becomes even more special.

On his website…Dave shared a legend he remembered hearing as a boy about how morning glories came to be.

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 gorgeous shades of blues, pinks, and purples. 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.

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So until tomorrow…Like stories…there are two sides to every tale…man, too, has two sides…good and bad. It is up to us to choose what is our right path to follow.

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

In the corner pile of plants and weeds…my honeysuckle is finding its niche…I caught just a slight whiff while taking pictures of the morning glories…but it sure brought back memories. The “Grumpy Gardener” in Southern Living...says he has a love/hate relationship with honeysuckle…starting with childhood.

“This rampant vine has probably engendered more fond childhood memories than any other plant. Remember when the sudden surprise of honeysuckle fragrance told you that spring was here? Remember pinching off the end of the flower, pulling the thread-like pistil through, and being rewarded with a drop of sweet nectar? No kid ever said anything bad about honeysuckle.”

But kids grow up and relatives (similar to Dave’s) warn about the invasive species…whether one is talking about morning glories or honeysuckle.

As for me…bring it on…this corner by the fence is just my surprise corner of weeds and old bushes that have made “friends” over the years with their seasonal “tenants”…morning glories and honeysuckle…and as for me…just let them grow…I love them all! 🙂