heirloom morning glory » The Enchanted Earth

greedy

Jul 232010

“A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.”

~Walt Whitman

You may have guessed by now that I’m a huge Whitman fan. His words do get featured pretty regularly in the “Quote of the Week” that appears in the sidebar.

But, as much as I adore morning glories (and especially my heirloom Grandpa Ott Morning Glories, which may well have been in existence during Whitman’s lifetime), I’ll have to disagree with the poet on this one.

Of course, it depends on the book, but…

Walt, come on, couldn’t we just have both?

Sure we could.

In fact, I did it this morning, sitting on the porch steps, alternately engrossed in my beautiful book, and then letting that book slide off into my lap as I got to daydreaming, or watching the bees in the mint patch, or wondering if the next ‘Cherokee Purple’ tomato plans to ripen up anytime soon, or holding my breath and sitting ever so still as the male ruby-throated hummingbird came within eight inches of my face, not certain if I was a huge flower or not — but not willing to pass up a source of nectar this promising without checking it out first.

(Hint: When you plan to be still in the garden, wear an orange or pink or scarlet shirt. Sitting in a sunbeam doesn’t hurt your chances for a hummingbird encounter, either. Sometimes, if you are very fortunate, a butterfly will land on your shoulder, too.)

I guess I’m just that kind of person. The kind who wants to have her cake and eat it, too. Shortly after F. and I first met, he accused me of being greedy — but not for money. The very idea made me laugh — and then laugh some more when I realized how true it was. I wasn’t used to thinking of the term “greed” apart from the Wall-Street-style connotation, and at first glance it didn’t seem to fit my lifestyle of simple pleasures enjoyed to their fullest.

It is now one of our little jokes, because it’s so true. Yes, I am greedy for all the joy this world has to offer, whether it’s the sun-drenched or the rain-soaked kind — or any of the million possibilities between them… and the transcendent joy of the shimmering rainbow when they meet. I am greedy for friendship, for beauty, for laughter, for wonder, for love, for inspiration, for sweetness and spice, for peace, and for connection — with other beings, with Nature, with the Divine.

I’ll take the magic of books, please – and a stained-glass morning glory with a honeybee feasting in its glowing throat. If it’s not too much to ask.

Wishing you a weekend filled with whatever satisfies you most.

Namasté, y’all.

Want more magical moments?

Subscribe!

PDF

unfolding (focus: week 26)

Flowers, Inspiration, focus 17 Responses »

Jul 102010

I’m not sure we could ever declare with certainty when this morning glory came into being.

Will its birth only occur once the trumpet is all the way opened (sometime just after dawn)?

Was it when the spiraling bud first began to unfurl (when I and this corner of the world still slept)?

Or maybe it was born when the little knot appeared on the vine, tiny precursor to a bud. Maybe we should go back even further than that, to the seedling that sent up its perfect green shoots this spring and managed to avoid my grasp as I thinned the group. But remembering those freely-sown volunteers takes me further back, to last season, when I was too lazy to pull down the spent vines in autumn, allowing the seed pods to burst and scatter their descendants all over the moist soil, where they were quickly buried by falling leaves. An ancient dance.

And then, because it’s me, I have to ask: Was this glowing purple blossom, surely deserving of the name “morning glory,” born when I first planted the seed for last year’s vine — or perhaps when I first conceived of a garden here and F.’s shovel blade first sliced through the sod?

We could go back farther to look for the origins of morning glory essence, and that would be quite far for an heirloom morning glory whose seeds have been saved for over a hundred years. We could extrapolate into the future, too, wondering if a morning glory achieves its purpose and destiny and becomes a true Morning Glory only once a honeybee goes hunting for nectar deep inside that pale, delicate throat, emerges coated in shimmering pollen… and zips off to sip another flower, keeps the whole thing going.

From a certain angle, at least, it’s all process. The morning glory is always unfolding, forever becoming. Never completed, never having arrived, and never at a definite end-point. Certainly it’s never a finished product. It’s hard for organic beings to become finished products. And we human beings are organic, of course — whether we ever try to live green or join a CSA or grow our own pesticide-free food.

We typically spend all this time and energy seeking that final destination point, the end of the path when we will have arrived or achieved our goal of the minute, or year, or decade. The goal circles around our minds, draining us of energy, making us feel bad for not having gotten there already. And for what? So that we can move on to the next want on our list, the next thing that everyone expects of us, the next thing that is supposed to finally make us happy and fulfilled.

The very next thing that keeps us from enjoying this thing that is our life, unfolding like a precious bud, right now.

Maybe our brains are wired that way, and maybe it’s cultural or economic — but it’s definitely not a reality-based approach to living. Better to take a deep breath, forget all that, and focus on the slow unfolding, the glory of this moment… and this moment, and this moment, and this moment. That’s where life occurs, after all, and that’s all we ever get to experience.

An older artist and sage once told me to think of my art — and my life, if possible — as “process, not product.” And I know now just how wise she was to redirect my focus. Not that I don’t forget and need to be reminded all over again occasionally. The cyclical nature of life in my garden is one of the best gentle reminders I’ve encountered.

Week 26 of Focus, the halfway point of the experiment, appropriately enough, saw me cycling back around to one of the original reasons I had for choosing “focus” as my word of 2010: awareness of the present moment. This week was all about me unfurling, morning-glory style, before my very own eyes — and also about the steady revelation of the narrow slice of path directly in front of my foot, about the way the future unfolds itself very carefully, very simply, perpetually becoming now as if there were nothing to this cosmic magic trick.

I hope we’ll all take at least a moment to enjoy the future-become-present on this lovely Saturday. It won’t ever be coming ’round again quite this way.

Namasté, y’all.

PDF

simple grace

Easy/For Beginners, Flowers, seeds 22 Responses »

Jun 032010

This morning I realized we had our first morning glory flower of the season — only I didn’t make time to photograph it until a few minutes ago, when it was folding in upon itself, its brief day in the sun nearly complete. Still, I was amazed and grateful to witness its appearance in my garden, especially because I did not plant it.

Exactly where I planted my heirloom “Grandpa Ott’s” morning glory seeds last year, a new crop have sprung up this year, healthy and ready to go. I merely needed to do a little thinning and replace the rotting twine that guided them up to the porch railing. This recent experience convinces me that my desired style of gardening may be closer to friendly self-seeding annuals in a cottage-garden style setting, lots of pretty things that pretty much take care of themselves given good soil, bright sun, and plenty of fresh rainwater.

Of course, no garden is so idyllic that it takes care of itself. First of all, such a place would hardly qualify for the name “garden.” And secondly, I’d be bored. I need my garden to need me, when you come right down to it. That is part of the pleasure.

Yet there is such simple grace in a plant throwing down its seeds because it likes the home you’ve provided, and in those seeds springing up of their own accord, raring to go for a new season of beauty and bounty. I definitely would like my next garden, wherever it will be, to include more of that.

If only technology could participate in some of that simple grace! Our DSL woes continue, as some of you may have guessed by my sparse participation online. I haven’t even caught up on responding to comments and messages from the last time we went without a connection, and it’s happening again. Turns out it’s not the internal wiring in the house — which only verifies my intuition that the problem is outside somewhere. It kicks up every single time there is a major torrential rain. This time, the connection went out just after our flash floods on Tuesday night.

It could, of course, be the long wire that is not even buried underground, but runs up the slope out of the hollow only slightly bedded down in the dirt and leaf mold. If you were to shuffle your toe over it just right, you could conceivably trip over this wire on your way around the side of the house to the Victory Garden. When F. first located it when picking wild blackberries, we were both astonished and amazed. A loose wire, just snaking through the forest.

Thus, you can probably imagine the skeptical expression on my face when the last repair technician assured me it was the internal wiring in the house causing the problem. Maybe because a rodent had chewed a wire in the crawl space, he said. All I could envision as he spoke was the legion of chipmunks with access to that long green wire stretched out beneath the tree canopy and the bright blue sky. I wasn’t convinced I knew enough to argue with him, however, so I just let him go ahead and do his thing. Naturally, I’m ruing that decision now, less than two weeks later.

The main thing I want to say, however, is that if I’ve been absent from your blog, please know that I am still trying to catch up, and hopefully you will see me there soon. In spite of all that free time to clean the house and weed the garden, I do miss my blog friends, and I hope we have steady, reliable internet service soon.

Cross your fingers for us; won’t you?

PDF

Older Entries

greedy

unfolding (focus: week 26)

simple grace

Quote of the Week

Recent Posts

From the Archives

Who am I?

Where does my garden grow?

My Gallery of Photographs: Postcards and Prints Available

Blogroll

Categories

Archives

Need to find something specific?

Tags