in a window box wet

in a window box wet

petunias -- red petals

falling with the rain

First Friday Artwalk on a wet October evening, I am making the rounds of art galleries. Walking down the wide brick alley connecting the courthouse to the square, I pass a window box full of petunias. The red flowers explode like fireworks in the dim light, sparkling in the rain and showering petals onto a slanted cover. The hatch may once have been used for delivering coal, but now it serves as a canvas for an impressionist tableau. The old brick wall, glowing blue in the low light, accents the brightness of the blossoms. Here, in this out-of-the-way place, a still life as beautiful as anything in a gallery.

no one planted them

no one planted them

or watered them through the ongoing drought

a bouquet of pale purple petunias 

growing from a crack in the concrete curb

Coming out of the bank, I almost step on them, but I'm arrested by a dozen purple eyes looking up at me. How did they get there, a clutch of petunias growing out of a crack in the curb? Certainly no one planted them there. True, there a window boxes on the bank's windows, spilling over with a riot of petunias. But none of them are this lovely shade of lavender. For sure, no one watered them through this long summer's drought. Yet they are flourishing, delicate but indomitable, Nature's everlasting bounty.

blooming between bricks

blooming between bricks

beside the iron streetlamp

bright pink petunias

A day past the autumn equinox, but it feels like the height of summer, hot and humid. No hand planted petunias here, but these enterprising flowers seem happy to keep on growing in a tiny bit of dirt between the brick sidewalk and the concrete base of the iron streetlamp. It makes me reflect that soft yet hardy plants will be here long after the iron streetlamp has rusted away and the concrete and bricks have broken into pieces.

purple petunias

purple petunias

growing in the gap between

Walker and walkers

Late October and a purple petunia plant is still blooming profusely in a crevice between a granite wall and a concrete sidewalk, literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. But I don't hear it complaining. Somehow, in spite of its accidental sprouting in such a restricted space, the fragile, fragrant blossoms are flourishing, tucked up against the Walker wall, safe from passing feet.