Shouldn’t the Morning Be Glorious?

Seeing the misunderstood vine as a lesson in what it means to be fully alive

By Josh Singleton | Founder and Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project

We’ve spent a long time trying to tame what was never meant to be controlled. The morning glory reminds us that life, when seen through the right lens, isn’t reckless at all. It’s rhythmic. Its reach toward light isn’t defiance, it’s design. In the prairie, where it’s finally in its place, this once-misjudged vine shows us what happens when something is free to be what it already knows how to be.

In most gardens, morning glories are pulled before they bloom. Their vines twist too quickly. Their reach feels disruptive. Their persistence unsettles our sense of control. They’ve been called invasive, aggressive, and unruly.

But here, in the pocket prairie at Emmanuel, they’re home. The same instincts once judged as intrusive now serve the ecosystem. Their deep purple trumpets open with the sunrise, feeding bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds before closing again at dusk. Their roots hold the soil. Their vines knit stems together. Their rhythm reminds the prairie that dawn is still worth meeting.

Nothing about the morning glory is wrong. It is our understanding that has been out of place.

When we call something “bad,” it is often because we have pulled it out of the system it was created for.
When we react instead of observe, we miss what it was trying to show us.

Even its name carries a quiet question.
Morning glory.
Shouldn’t the morning be glorious?

This vine does not apologize for reaching. It does not hide from light or wait for permission to bloom. It follows its design, unfolding, winding, and connecting, each morning declaring what we so easily forget: that glory is still found in the act of rising.

Our reactive gardening often comes from misunderstanding. We try to manage what we have not yet taken the time to know. We label instincts as threats, forgetting that every plant carries a purpose shaped by its place in the whole. The morning glory’s reach is not rebellion, it is rhythm. Its winding is not chaos, it is connection.

Here, in its place, it no longer competes. It contributes. It feeds others and proves that nothing in nature is intrinsically bad. Disorder comes only when something is pulled out of alignment or forced to serve a story it was never written into.

Every living thing carries the impulse to become. But it is more than an urge. It is life itself, expressing what it is.

For the morning glory, climbing is not a decision. It is the evidence of life moving through it. The spiral, the reach, the bloom, each one is a visible pulse of something unseen.

The same is true for people. We were never meant to manage our becoming like a chore. We were meant to live it, instinctively, honestly, and freely. Yet somewhere along the way, we learned to doubt the very movement that keeps us alive.

We prune our reach to stay acceptable.
We compare our growth to those beside us.
We silence our expression to stay safe.

But life itself is what is trying to move through us, urging us to rise, to connect, and to feed what is around us. When we resist that movement, we do not become disciplined. We become disconnected.

To live instinctively is to trust that the same current that pulls the vine toward light is also pulling us toward purpose. It is not ambition. It is not striving. It is the quiet certainty that we were made to grow.

The morning glory does not climb for approval. It climbs because climbing is its way of breathing.
And maybe that is the invitation. To stop apologizing for being alive in the way we were meant to be.

Scientific Insight: Why Morning Glories Climb

Morning glories (Ipomoea cordatotriloba and related species) are native to the Gulf Coast and much of the southern United States. They flourish in disturbed or open habitats where sunlight and moisture meet, often along fencelines, prairies, and meadows. Their behavior tells a story of adaptation that has been refined for survival, balance, and connection.

The morning glory climbs through a movement called circumnutation, a slow and graceful spiral guided by internal rhythms. Each stem traces circular patterns through the air until it finds a structure to hold onto. Once contact is made, specialized growth cells on one side of the stem elongate more than the other, causing the vine to curl around the support. What looks like wandering is actually the plant’s way of feeling its surroundings, an elegant choreography between sensitivity and purpose.

This motion is controlled by light, gravity, and the plant’s internal clock. As daylight increases, the vine’s cells elongate more rapidly on the shaded side, creating the familiar twisting motion toward illumination. When light shifts, the spiral adjusts. The morning glory literally follows the sun, embodying a kind of slow-motion intelligence that is attuned to rhythm and response.

Its blooms tell another story of timing. Each flower opens in the early morning as humidity rises and sunlight activates the cells along the petal’s midrib. The bloom unfurls to expose a deep nectar well that serves native bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. By afternoon, as temperatures climb and pollinators rest, the bloom closes, conserving water and energy.

Each individual flower lasts only a single day, yet the plant produces new buds in a continuous sequence. This creates a living rhythm of opening and closing that mirrors the rising and setting of the sun. In ecological time, it becomes a dependable food source during late summer and early fall, when many early-season flowers have faded but pollinators still need nourishment. Morning glories bridge that seasonal gap, carrying life from one phase to the next.

Beneath the soil, their roots knit into the upper layer of the prairie bed, holding moisture and preventing erosion. The vine’s dense foliage offers shade and microhabitats for ground insects, while its dried stems later return organic matter to the soil. What was once seen as a competitor is, in truth, a collaborator in the broader cycle of renewal.

The morning glory’s entire existence is built on rhythm: the slow turn of its stems, the brief flare of its flowers, the pulse of its days. It lives in a world measured not by minutes but by the quiet reliability of response. Its instinct to climb and its pattern of bloom reveal what balance looks like when life is allowed to follow its design.

The morning glory is not trying to prove anything. It simply moves in rhythm with what gives it life. It listens to light, adjusts to wind, and knows when to open and when to rest. People are no different at our core. When we stop striving to control every outcome, when we learn to listen to the conditions that help us grow, we begin to move with the same wisdom. Like the vine, our strength is not in speed or dominance but in awareness and presence. To live fully is to grow toward what nourishes, to rise without apology, and to nourish others as we rise. In doing so, we find our place within the larger story that is always unfolding around us.