Most of the blog posts you read here are pre-written and pre-scheduled, days and sometimes weeks in advance. It’s the only way to keep up a regular and consistent schedule with a full-time job. On this Sunday morning, however, I have nothing scheduled, nothing written, and nothing strongly impelling me to do so. In the place of such regularly-scheduled history, I write this off the cuff, on a beautiful morning where the sun has revealed the first morning glory blooms of the season.
Morning glories have come to signify the end of summer for me, which is a shift from their original meaning. In my younger years they meant early morning days when the sun would cajole them into opening before I even made it out of the house. Those were the big, sky-blue beauties of my youth – the old-fashioned morning glory variety that would wind its way through the chainlink fence that the neighbor had up, laced with metallic white privacy strips – the kind that made such a racket if a ball or child managed to run into it.
Only when I got older did I realize how much later in the season the morning glories would start their show, especially these smaller, if more vibrant, shades. Now, they signal the imminent arrival of fall, the point where the ferns have browned beyond any hope of returning to their early chartreuse beauty, and where the blooms of any roses have long since turned to hips.
The turn feels different this year, somehow sadder and somehow more welcome. The light glows differently at this time too – richer, more resonant – as if it knows these are the last days of the summer, as if it feels it slipping away and holds it closer.
