急いで咲く (Blooming in a Hurry)

　写真はわが家の庭で咲いた今年初の「遅咲きアサガオ」の花。9 月 14 日撮影。遅咲き種にしても今年の開花は遅過ぎるように思ったが、この植物についての私の過去のブログ記事を見ると、どうやら平年並みのようだ。ただし今年は、昨年この付近の地面まで落ちた種子から出た茎は伸び方が不良で、花をつけそうにもない。そして、写真の花は 2 輪とも、金網塀に掛けたプランターから芽吹いてまだツルを伸ばしていない短い茎の先端に、急ぐかのように咲いた、やや妙な咲き方のものである。

The above photo, taken on September 14, shows this year's first flowers of "late blooming morning glory" in our yard. I thought the blooming of this plant, even though being a late-blooming variety, was too late this year, but my blog posts of recent years about this plant indicated that this was quite normal. However, a stem of this plant that came out from a seed dropped on the ground near here has not well grown to bloom. Further, the two flowers shown in the photo are fairly uncommon in the fact that each of them bloomed, as if in a hurry, at the top of a short stem that happened to shoot from a planter, hung on a wire-mesh fence, and had no tendril yet.