Poised on its pistilGetting the nod from dusk’s dawn
Night’s heady perfume
haiku by C. Gardner
Watching the swallows and swifts this evening while I watered the garden, and waiting for the appearance of the bats overhead as my signal to go inside, I reached down to turn off the well pump and got a whiff of this moonflower – wow! Most of them are planted along the fence surrounding the pond, intermixed with day-blooming morning glories, but a few are in pots up beside the house, where on humid nights their lemony scent drifts in the windows. The smell can be overpowering enough to give me a headache, especially if we also have Angel’s Trumpets blooming. I loved the shape of this flower as it unfurled.
Some cultural info about moonflowers is available in this blog post from 6/8/06.
When I first saw that photo, I thought it was a hankerchief blowing in the wind!
How graceful and lovely – I tried to grow some this year but the squirrels broke the plants down… Perhaps another year.
Beautiful photo – I can nearly smell the fragrance.
Lovely picture. Lovely flower. Lovely poem.
Thanks for the info. on this beautiful flower. I’ll have to see if it will grow happily in our area. We have Datura here, of course.
Another plant I have yet to grow. The photo is as graceful as the poem.
I just looked back at the plant you found by the stream. Yes, I do see it.
This is beautiful!
They are big flowers, yet very delicate somehow. I like how Susan compared it to a hankie. Wish they lasted longer than a day – the next afternoon they look like a used hankie.
😉