Glory

The white trumpet-like flowers cleary identify this vine as of the morning glory family (Convolvulceae). But this is not the common morning glory (Ipomoea purpurea) that we all know so well. It is a different flower altogether. This is hedge bindwind (Calystegia sepium), which gets its name from its binding winding characteristics. It has climbed two large-stalked weeds here. It would do the same with ornamentals. It also likes to bind its way up these leaning twigs. It will wind and bind anything. Even the weed book, which usually speaks favorably of weeds, suggests to keep this species in check. It is native to North America, but invasive to cultivated ornamental gardens. Here its arrow-shaped leaves cluster and fill an otherwise non-green wooden fence and these leaning twigs. It behaves like an invasive species in its native landscape. Vines are like that, often. They hold out a pretty leave or an attractive flower and before you know it they have choked out your favorite bush or sapling tree. They grow fast, but not faster than my eyes. I will watch them carefully.

Everyone turns their eyes to the tragedy of Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi. Even the wayward prince rose from his usual mid-summer torpor to return to the capitol and ask his army to do other work for him. And this is a terrible tragedy, especially the hubris of building cities against the sea below its level, and crowding poor into its path. We mustn't see this as nature's wrath, but our own creation. Perhaps the result of our own wrath. These are certainly the terrible results of our foolishness and lack of foresight. But the deepest tragedy today comes again from Iraq, where almost 700 Shi'ite pilgrims were killed in a panic during a procession. Someone shouted that a suicide bomber was about to blow himself up on a crowded bridge and people were thrown and jumped from the bridge to their death, while other were crushed to death by the retreating throng. This is American security at work. We are like the hedge bindwind, with less benvolence.