Summer’s Dying Glory

I almost didn’t shoot it.
The morning glories wrapped around my front porch railing had seen better days. Once they fluttered in the breeze a vibrant white and purple that dripped off of lush green vines. But the brown that creeps upward through the vines, the dying yellow that speckles the leaves, these are always the first signs of autumn’s impending arrival.
I thought their beauty lost to summer and too much photographic attention. There are only so many ways to shoot a flower and I’d tried them all when they were at their peak in late July. I caught a glimpse of them as I loaded my laptop into my bag for work. I turned away, having seen it all before.
My lab puppy stuck his head through the translucent curtain and just stood there, transfixed. He wagged his tail happily as I made the kind of puttering around noises that typically distracted him. When the sound of kibble being dumped into his dish failed to pull him from the window I decided to see what had fixated my very distractible dog.
There was nothing to be seen but the last flowers of summer, gloriously bedecked in morning dew.
They’ll be gone by the weekend. The vines are so pitifully brown that they almost seem to be asking me to put them out of their misery.
But not before I photographed their last glorious summer morning.