I was astounded the first time I saw this climbing flower spilling over a trellis! The delicate feathery leaves combined with the bright true-red color of the tiny trumpet-shaped blooms adds splashes of color and conversation to your garden. It works well combined with other plantings; other varieties of morning glories, of which, it is a hybrid, or the fall-blooming clematis. In other blog posts, I have featured whichever was in bloom at the time.
The seeds are very tiny; you see the unripened pods above sticking up on the vine like grandmother's tatting on a handkerchief. With one seed per pod, you can see why it is outrageous to charge $2.45 for 30 seeds! They are minuscule, like poppy seeds. All the more reason to cultivate garden friends so you can harvest now, trade later in the dead of winter when only arm-chair gardening in a catalogue is available. One of my favorite March-time hobbies.
For now though, with the cooler weather, we are back outside yanking old growth, sunflowers that are all spent on the stalks, enjoying the last of the tomatoes from the vine and maintenance chores like that.
Last week, we had our town-wide yard sale and fall festival. People come from miles around just for the yard sales so I pitched in with friends to rid myself of clutter. It takes a lot of work to load things up, set things up and all that, but when someone else can use what you have at a very good price, it is a good thing. It's bound to happen; that you see something you want at the sale so you slash $5.00 off your total and add it to your friend's and come home from the very sale where you were getting rid of treasures, with a new one. "But I will use this one!" I say to myself. Every household needs an electric car buffer if they do not have a garage. Oh, I just made more work for myself, didn't I?
Well, it's all in a day's work at home. Puttering in the garden or workshop keeps us involved, gives us opportunity to put our thoughts in order along with the yard and the tools in the shed.
I love the change of seasons, even if there are parts that I do not like, like the loss of daylight hours. I can seriously see me being a warm-climate snow bird, leaving here in the winter and staying where it is warm until the spring returns. For now though, home is here. The corn is ripening, I am spotting pumpkin groupings on porches. I am feeling the internal shift from one to another.
That maxim to "Take time to stop and smell the roses" is a good one!
