Morning Glories

Photo by Raymond Eichelberger on Unsplash

I stood next to my garden and stared in dismay. A garden in the fall is a bittersweet sight. Most of the green and burgeoning plants I had tenderly placed into the soil or sewn as seeds this spring are looking tired now, sun-scorched, bug-nibbled, nearing the end of their seasonal lifespan.

All but the damn morning glories.

I did not plant the morning glories, they were already here when we arrived. There’s a quaint little single length of fence at the corner of our patio, which now separates my main garden from my raspberry bed. I use the fence to support the length of wire trellis my early spring snap peas happily twist themselves around, but no matter how diligently I pull morning glories as I see them emerge, stubbornly, from the spring soil, they always manage to outpace me. The problem is that I get a bit bored of gardening by summer and want a break before the zucchini and cucumbers, and then tomatoes, start piling up, and I tend to ignore the garden (except for the necessary watering) for the last weeks of June and first weeks of July. Then the harvesting begins with a vengeance, and I simply don’t have time to wage war. And I end up here again, gazing forlornly at the tangled mass of vines that are threatening to overgrow my raspberries as they droop, heavy with new growth and still green fall berries. The brilliant purple flowers turn their defiant faces towards me, a silent declaration that they were here first and aren’t about to be displaced. With a sigh I pick my way through the web of pumpkin vines and start untangling.

The problem is, also, that I kind of love morning glories. They are so bold and so determined, indefatigable. Where there is nothing else to support them, multiple vines will twine around each other, creating ropes as thick as my finger that reach out, searching constantly for new territory to conquer. Morning Glory was also the name of the first horse I really loved and who loved me. I was eight and newly advanced to Level 2 in my horseback riding lessons. My favorite teacher assigned me her favorite pony to ride, probably because she recognized that I approached horses with a kind of awe and usually assumed (with a few bratty exceptions) that they knew more than I did. This was certainly true of Morning Glory. She was a Shetland pony, probably older than I was, with the slightly saggy body and unending patience of one who has borne many babies. I trusted her completely, and she took good care of me. It was the first time I had experienced such a bond with a horse, and I responded with complete and utter devotion, as only a child that age can. I’m sure I wore out my family’s collective patience talking about her. I would stay as long as my mother let me after class, petting and brushing and talking to Morning Glory, confident that she was listening. On cold days I would wriggle my hands under her thick mane to warm them and she never objected. Morning Glory simply loved the attention that I was entirely happy to give. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.

I never grew morning glories until we moved back to Ohio in August of 2018. That first September my sister, Merry, left for Uganda to be a mother’s helper to a missionary family from my parents’ church. My parents and youngest sister, Rose, missing Merry and happy to have us back within reach, visited often that month. One almost summer-warm evening we spent outside on our new property, admiring the blooming morning glories while my husband and Rose kicked a soccer ball around the yard. I had my camera out and Rose had me take a picture of her in mid-jump, pure joy on her almost-teenager face. We took a group picture that day, all of us lined up behind the morning glories, three-year-old Rena climbing the fence and baby Lee in Daddy’s arms. That picture is still on my wall, evidence of a perfect day, and one of the last times Rose was able to manifest her naturally boundless energy. Within a few months she would begin showing symptoms of what it would take more than a year to discover was liver cancer. Within a year she would lose most of her energy. In eighteen months she would be gone. But we didn’t know it then, that night was still whole and happy.