I have always loved morning glories.
Monet used them to great advantage when he grew them amongst his sunflowers, it produced both contrast and a cooling effect to their warm hues.
(Please do click the photo to visit casy/artandcolor’s site where you will find this original photograph and many more do delight your eye!)
Georgia O’Keefe loved them enough to memorialize them in her painting called simply
Blue Morning Glories
There is even a thermal pool in Yellowstone National Park called…
(Please click the picture to visit the source: Wordless Tech)
So named for its beautiful blue depth and resemblance to it its namesake.
But for all her beauty and grace, the Morning Glory is a common hussy! She grows everywhere here, rambling in field and lawn, scrambling up cornstalks and fences, and all but swallowing my roses!
Sigh…
and for all my searching, pulling, and destroying, she persists.
Yet, she beguiles me.
When on a humid, sunless, dare I say cheerless day in August I go out in the early morning only to find…
that she has sent out her snake-like tendrils to take over the fence surrounding the silkies hutch.
And reaching out to clutch her, intending to rip her from the fence, I grab a handful of leaves and realize…
I am holding her heart in my hand.
I grab again to pull…
and there amongst the perfect heart-shaped leaves I find her dew kissed face. I’m drawn to her intense blue, her clear white throat, and I think,
(Click on her face and have a closer look at her beauty)
“She is perfection.”
Thus, I find myself for a third season, unable to remove Morning Glory from the Farmlet. So she stays, having once again stolen my heart.
And in that moment
I consider the idea
of actually planting her in her own spot next year…
Perhaps amidst the sunflowers!
Life on the Farmlet 
my husband can’t stand morning glories. I like them but they do take over. If I don’t get out and pull them out of the flower bed, he will get rid of them and the fall clemantis that is also in that bed.
The clematis too? I can see your incentive to eradicate the morning glories! I LOVE my clematis!
Lynda, what a beautiful post – poetry. 😀
Thanks Lindy! I love doing this stuff, just can’t make a living at it, ya know? But perhaps it is good practice for my book? Dunno.
This was a a lovely post, I agree with Lyndy. I have always loved morning glories, they are a perfect reminder of my grandmothers garden. She had a beautiful collection that my grandfather build a special fence just for. They are a happy delicate burst of color and I think you moving them by your sunflowers would be perfect!
Thank you Ginger! Then it is decided. Next spring when the sunflower seeds go in they will be accompanied by morning glory seeds as well. Though I do wonder if there is a timing involved for the planting. I made the mistake of planting my beans and corn at the same time one year. The result was that the beans overtook the corn and pulled it all down to the ground. Not happy! I will investigate over the winter before sowing them in spring.
Lovely post, Lynda – wonderful range of emotions. It is the frustration of my gardening life that anything that is hardy enough to do well here, always does too well and takes over too easily. Morning glories however would be one of those that I would love to be able to grow but is much to tender for my climate.
Cindy, They are beautiful, not doubt about that, but they are exceptionally happy here in the south. Since moving here I can tell you that I never planted even one, and they are everywhere! Most of them are that pretty blue, but every once in a while they put out a pink sport which is cute, but not dreamy like the blue. If I could share some of them with you I would certainly love to do it! 🙂
Lovely girl! What a lovely post. I have the same love hate. I have the heirloom Grandpa Ott – a lovely deep purple (want some seeds!?) and it’s nearly a weed, but every once and a while – you catch a glimpse of it looking so lovely –
Jayme, you have such a lovely garden. I would be happy to receive seeds from any plant you want to send to me! Just wrap them in a slip of paper, put a name on them, I will look up all the details for planting and care. I love doing that sort of thing, and I could probably find all the information right in my own library! Oh yes, and I need new milk weed seeds because mine never came up where I planted them. (long story). So glad you stopped by today!
Love the special trellising idea! So, did you have a lot of established garden plants when you moved in? Like, where the Morning Glory seeds would have come from? (Or maybe birds spread them around?) Speaking of birds, do your Chooks enjoy the shade on their coop in the heat of summer? Where else could you use some “instant” shade?
About the planting issue… Your best bet is when the seed pods start to split and spill/spit their seed all over the place. (Come to think of it, that works for most things; )
Deb, when we moved in here there was a small garden out front that the previous lady of the Farmlet had planted. There were tons of Dogwood trees, and several peonies. But not much else with the exception of morning glories and poke weed which grow everywhere here in N. AL.
The morning glories have had perhaps 150 years or more to get around. Being a popular, easy to grow cottage garden plant I can just imagine the ladies of yore carrying them in their supplies. When they, the first pioneers, came to settle in this wild frontier they had fertile soil in which to plant their gardens and grow their crops…
Morning Glory was delighted, I’m sure.
Hm,mm, makes me wonder now you’ve said that, do they by chance have other uses, as a medicinal or dye plant perhaps? ‘Cause even though they’re a stunner in the garden, I’ll just bet they’ve got something more going on. (Those pioneer ladies weren’t taken in by just looks alone; )
Deb, I did some digging, and they have no other redeeming value other than their beauty and fast growth. You have to see it from their perspective. Your husband has just lost his mind and come under the spell of “Go West Young Man,” (this being the furthest western frontier in the mid 1700s to early 1800s). So, you get here and there is nothing but oaken jungle types all about. Mosquitoes, snakes, and other creepy crawlies abound. You are stuck in a little one room cabin with a dirt floor, and did I mention hot and sticky? Yeah, the word was sure to get out, and therefore you would want “a little bit of home” something beautiful and familiar to grow in this ‘WILD’erness. So you tucked some seeds in with all your belongings. They were small enough to make the journey in your pockets if it came to it. Seems reason enough to me.
I did the same when I moved here. Cut, plucked, potted, and saved seeds to have a little bit of ‘home’ here. 🙂
Initially had a hard time getting past all of the “druggie crap” webpages about its LSA content (a naturally occurring, much weaker version of LSD)… But Morning Glory is ALSO used as: a dye plant (produces blues/violets, go figure), a cathartic, for headache; is antibacterial/antimicrobial and entheogenic (used in traditional religious ceremonies in Mexico/Central America).
Altogether a very useful plant!