lovelier than perfection

To me, this is maybe the only time a morning glory vine looks prettier than in early summer.

Remember June? When these leaves were perfectly shaped, deep green, and smooth? Velvety in their youth? Remember when the blooms were fresh and jewel toned, so vibrant they shimmered? Those were the exiting first days of summer. The first weeks of heat and freedom, sex and new life in the garden.

But these days, the beginning of our calm descent into autumn, they bear a different kind of beauty. I love how these same vines are washed out now, tattered by the wind but still smiling at every sunrise. Theses blooms are fading now and soft like very old, very comforting cotton bed sheets.

It’s a quieter loveliness. Something more confident than the brazenness of early June. And speaking of sex in the garden, just look at all those seed pods nodding demurely at the ground. Next summer’s arena.

“He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere.
He is an aesthetic solitary.
His beautiful, light imagination is the wing
that on the autumn evening
just brushes the dusky window.”
-Henry James  
XOXOXOXO