While reminiscing with my mom over stories of their shared childhood adventures, my aunt Beverly recently brought up her memories of summer hours spent hacking down climbing morning glory vines in the family’s cornfield. Maybe a little surprisingly, Beverly remembered morning glory duty fondly and her stories were on my mind a few weeks back as I drove past a dusty cornfield festooned in morning glory vines … and so I pulled over, and pulled out the camera.
If you’re not a farmer, morning glories are awfully pretty: clean, white blooms point skyward like proud trumpets and their vines wrap anything close by with an elegant filigree pattern, reaching out with searching tendrils for paths toward the summer sun.
If you are a farmer, however, morning glories are a scourge and a pestilence and you’re probably questioning the sanity of people who photograph them … much like the nice gentleman in the white pickup truck who, seeing my car on the side of the road, pulled over and kindly asked if I needed help (presumably automotive help, since he likely considered me and my morning glory fixation beyond any mental health intervention he could muster up).
But country folks are a live-and-let-live bunch and after I reassured him that yes, I was hanging out alone on the dusty margins of a cornfield on purpose, he continued on his way, leaving me alone with the morning glories, a cloud-dappled blue sky and some absolutely beautiful golden summer evening light.
Of all the photos from that cornfield, this is my favorite: a few blossoms triumphantly saluting the August evening, with cornstalks gesturing skyward in the background. My aunt was right – morning glories do make for beautiful memories. I’m sending her a print of this one. It’s in the mail, Aunt Beverly!
