Perfuming the night

Poised on its pistil
Getting 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.

7 thoughts on “Perfuming the night”

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

    😉

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