Wisteria

It's wisteria season here in London. I'm enjoying walking past townhouses with huge purple vines clambering up their facades, sweetening the air.

Wisteria (paired with clematis in the photo above) seems like such an urban plant. I always see it in cities. In fact, there used to be a great wisteria vine around the corner from my apartment in New York.

I can only think of one exception, and that was a wisteria vine that grew in a cluster of melaleuca trees overhanging our church parking lot when I was a kid in Florida. One of the streets in the neighborhood where I grew up is named Wisteria, but I never saw wisteria actually growing there.

One of the bloggers I regularly read posted last week about the death of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch -- how the death of one so young serves as a reminder of our own fleeting mortality. I liked the post, derived from the Zen teachings of Dogen, even though I never liked the Beastie Boys. I'm mentioning this only incidentally, not to force a metaphor -- while the wisteria blossoms are fleeting too, at least they come back each year!