Thursday, August 21, 2008

Late Bloomers

The temperature dropped to the low 50's the last two nights. The cold morning dew on the grass makes it nearly impossible to venture out in bare feet. Round bales sit in the pasture. The sunflowers are no longer putting out new buds, but instead goldfinches are happily gorging themselves on the seed heads...sigh. Hard to avoid the fact that summer days are fleeting. Fortunately, the sadness of this realization is soothed slightly by a few late bloomers in the garden. The Heavenly Blue morning glory took it's good old time establishing it's vine this summer. I nearly pulled it out a few times in frustration. After finding this beauty this morning, I'm glad I didn't.

The Moonflower vine was a completely different story. It took off in May and almost instantly covered my humble choice of a support. The vines reached the top and then spiraled out in all directions like a giant green octopus. The flowers however, were elusive...until this week. Since the full moon Saturday, it is averaging one bloom opening every evening. Yesterday there were three! Notice the glowing 'moon' at the very center of the flower? Click on the image for a close up. This 'moon' showed up on a few of the photosThe passionflower vine never even poked it's sleepy head through the ground until well into June. I had nearly given up on it's return. A few flowers have bloomed so far, but the vines are just loaded with tiny buds. Keeping fingers crossed that they bloom well before frost. There is tincture making in its future.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shockingly beautiful!

Hildie

Tina Sams said...

It is Sept 1st. I found my passionflower vine last week - only a couple of feet grown. Maybe next year :-(. But there is plenty of the tincture left from last year.

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