Mornings are cool and wet now, often hazy with fog and dew. Any day now there will be a frost on the blades of grass. If it’s hard enough they will buckle and crumple. Fall gives its glory and takes it away overnight. Until that happens, though, the garden will throw out a few morning glory flowers, even if it’s overcast, and on those days they may last a little longer.
This morning’s post is not about the flowers however, it’s about the unheralded leaves. These heart-shaped beauties go unnoticed or unremarked upon because the glory has always honored the blooms. Yet look at what we’ve been missing – leaves that are perfectly-shaped hearts – little valentines in mottled green, delicately lining the vines like some love-festooned garland. Seeing the garden in a new way, and discovering unnoticed bits of magic now that the bombast of summer has gone away, is a practice of the garden that never grows old or tiresome. It elicits a child-like wonder in me, and when you still have the capacity to be astounded all over again at the ripe age of 47, then there’s still hope for you, in a literal sense. Hope is there… for you… in the cool foggy mist of a morning when love appears tangled in a pretty vine.
