Wisteria

Day 233: Although my wisteria is far from the spectacular, thick vines you find blanketing other peoples' porches and trellises, it keep my carport shady and has provided an excellent foundation on which many generations of robins have built nests and reared their young. It rewards me with a few scattered, pendant blooms and an abundance of leaves with little care but for the occasional radical pruning. It tends to invade the trusses of the carport's interior when I'd rather it crawled over the roof, so every few years, I take down the brittle stragglers in the hopes of encouraging outward growth. Its main trunk is as thick as my upper arm, and several lesser branches have wound themselves around each other to the point of appearing braided. It clambers over itself, having long since destroyed the lattice I put up for its support when it was but a stripling vine as it coiled about the laths like a boa constrictor. Despite its paucity of blooms, it is a fascinating study in textures, and in the force which Nature can exert in the simple development of cells.