I’ve always admired the tiny, white, star-shaped blossoms of Sweet Autumn Clematis, the vine that spills over fences and ledges in a profusion of sweet-smelling blooms in late summer.
Years ago, a neighbor shared a tiny little sprout, digging it up near her fence. Cradling it like a baby, I took it home, where I lovingly put it in the ground. But for years, it just didn’t get going the way I thought it would. I needn’t have worried. The perennial vine, years later, has firmly taken root.
This year, our house appears to stand the risk of being overtaken and returned to the earth by the Sweet Autumn Clematis. Glinting with dew in the early morning sun, the vines are at the same time beautiful and threatening, the way their amoeba-like tendrils reach further and further up and out. The corner of our house is draped in the delicate white flowers. Rogue morning glories are in the mix, too, fighting wildly to show their faces through the tangle of vines, and our bedroom windows are so surrounded by leaves that from the inside, it looks as though we’re living in a treehouse in the middle of a lush jungle.
I feel a strange camaraderie with these vines, wild and a little directionless, holding on to anything it can grasp ahold of.
Change swirls around me: my children growing into adulthood and moving to other cities is perhaps the starkest reminder to me that time is passing, tick tock tick. I cling to simple comforts and rituals, using familiarity to balance the other ways my life is shifting.
Likewise, my husband, the chief gardener in our home, would usually be hacking back these vines, keeping them orderly and at bay. But he seems to have decided to let them be. Why not? Let’s see how far they’ll go.
The sweet September sun smiles down on us. The garden looks wild, mostly tall native grasses that are turning gold, and bee balm, coreopsis, and coneflower that are past their prime. The zinnias and marigolds are the last holdouts, pointing their colorful heads toward the sky until the very last moment, when the first frost will cruelly dull their colors and send them home, the last lingering guests to leave the garden party.
September brings my sentimental side to the surface, I suppose. I sense the winds of change blowing, and I’m desperately holding on to anything nearby that might keep me rooted to the ground.
Another source of comfort, the prolific singer/songwriter, actress, and literacy advocate, Dolly Parton, left this earth last month at age 80. Her passing hit me hard, taking away a person who seems absolutely timeless to me. In the days after her death, I cued up “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” on my playlists. I lined up snacks and Kleenex beside me while I stayed up way past my bedtime in my dark living room, my face awash in the glow of Dolly portraying Truvy in Steel Magnolias.
Sentimental September is why the serpentine foliage is allowed to grasp onto our fence and devour the back corner of our house. Some days I wonder if it might turn on itself, like a snake eating its own tail. We let it reach and continue growing, because we know it can’t go forever. The frost will come and the blooms will drop. Bitter cold will shock the system of those lush green vines, turning them dark, limp, and droopy. Some day later in the fall, wearing flannels and work gloves, we’ll take garden shears to the vines, and clear them all off, dumping them unceremoniously into a wheelbarrow for its final trip to the compost pile. But when it’s September, it’s best not to think of all that. It’s best to bask in the deep golden sunlight and breathe in as much of the perfumy blossoms as you can. The shearing and the clearing come later. For now, reach out your arms and cling to the things you love, while keeping your feet planted firmly on the ground.
