Two of the (zillion) things that make my heart sing are sunflowers and Heavenly Blue morning glories. They're the plants that form the walls and roof of the sunflower house I first wrote about in 1991. I can't grow a sunflower house on the thick stone ledges that surround our cottage, but I CAN grow them in pots on our porch and have done so for the past 14 summers.
Usually the chipmunks or squirrels feast on the sunflowers JUST as they're forming, but this year they've escaped their normal fate of total destruction and have helped feed a family of goldfinches. My morning glories bloom in September, but this year, as though they know I won't be here in September (yes ,I realize that morning glories can't KNOW this) they've already started to bloom.
Azure, the color of "Sailor's jacket's," the brilliant patch of blue sky between clouds, greeted me this foggy morning as I glanced out my studio window. Memories flooded in, like the tide flowing into John's Bay from the wide Atlantic. I remembered my dear adopted Gram, Gladys Marie McKinstry in Kokomo, Indiana. Gram grew a trellis of Heavenly Blues outside her kitchen door every summer. I can still see the luminous blue with a red bird perched inside the thick tangle of vines.
Blessings from a foggy green island,
Sharon
