Sometimes you try to instruct plants: where to sprout and which way to grow. Sometimes plants teach you: how to live.
I’ve enjoyed watching my birdhouse gourd vines really get growing, and I often find myself lifting the vines off the tomato plants and off the oregano bush and tossing them back toward the trellis erected especially for their climbing pleasure. In the midst of the tossing, I spotted this gentle handshake between a vine and a sunflower leaf.
In their effort to steady themselves, to continue to grow, to find purchase in mid-air, these vines wind around anything. Here a vine links to a sunflower who has roots several feet away. This is normally my walking path from under the gourd trellis to the back of the garden, but I can’t pass through this new connection, and I am forced to consider how it is these vines stretch and reach and grow.
In a world that feels unsteady and unsteadies me from my feet–Indiana State Fair stage collapsing, earthquake in Virginia, changing governments in Libya and elsewhere, American economy clogged with unemployment–I am reminded to reach out to others and establish a connect that not only strengthens my small vine, but may steady the tall sunflower on the other end.