September’s Morning Glories are Worth the Wait

Locusts rasp. School buses roll. Squirrels bury lunches. Fog spangles spider webs. Sunlight slants at a new angle, leaving longer shadows. The Harvest Moon floats at the horizon, opposite the sunset. Essence-of-blue morning glory vines bloom in profusion.

       Ah, September.

       The Heavenly Blue Morning Glory, one of summer’s late bloomers, is spectacular now.

       In the spring and summer it’s a rather disappointing vine. The puny vines and anemic leaves inch up the chicken wire arranged around the pole of a bird feeder, but it takes nearly half the summer to reach window height.

       About then, the first nearly four-inch blooms open—truly a heavenly blue. Each azure blossom has five white ribs forming a star that swirls down into the deep funnel. A yellow vortex at the bottom holds a slender white pistil and nearly always an insect or two. One leaf shares a spot on the tendrils with each blossom stem.

       Halfway between each swirled rib is a furrow where it is neatly folded into the twist of a tiny, closed parasol until it unfurls with the sunrise.

       But morning glory vines thrive in late summer’s sweltering heat and humidity, sometimes growing several inches overnight. Every day or two I have to redirect the paths of the reaching tendrils back to the chicken wire, behind the now lush, heart-shaped leaves.

       Dozens of sky-blue blossoms appear each morning. Each bloom gets one day of life—if it’s cloudy. Rain or rays of the sun melt the fragile blossoms. Cloudy days mean getting to soak up the unduplicatable blue even longer.

       Morning glories plan ahead, with several blossoms developing on the same stem. One stem will have a fully opened dazzler, one promise for tomorrow, one for the next day, and another for the morning after that—nearly a week’s worth.

       This beautiful vine is fussy about frost, so we throw old sheets over it when it’s threatened, just to get to see the color of those gracefully bobbing blossoms just a few more days.

       But these short-lived September glories are worth waiting for the rest of the year. 

[The Dallas County News, September, 1995. At the time, The Dallas County News had just earned two awards from the National Newspaper Association. Including a second place for Best Editorial Page. Editor Laura Gift told me that my column on blue morning glories was featured in one of the submitted issues. “In essence, you deserve part of the credit for helping us to win the national recognition. Congratulations!”]

This story is also told in The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland, Chapter 3: Flora and Fauna.