Tendril Is The Morning Light

What you see on the left is a portrait of cucumber plant tendril. Tendrils are spindly appendages on cucumber plants that reach out in search of something to latch onto. Once attached they wrap around and around, drawing up and securing the stem of the plant from which they sprout. Tendrils are the main reason that vines vine up things.

I awoke this morning with one of those thoughts that is permitted to the simple and the retired. Could I see a tendril attach itself to the object of its affection?

I have read that these little things move at an astonishingly rapid rate...for a plant, that is. And, yesterday, I had noticed several tendrils that were wagging about (like the one on the right) looking for something to embrace.

With a cup of coffee in hand, I marched out to the patio, found my subject, and proceeded tame a wild tendril. Granted, tendril taming does not have the inherent dangers that sticking one's head in a lion's mouth might have, but for a city boy who had spent the last fifteen years of his working life in an assembly plant which has the same general ambiance of the interior of an aircraft carrier but with Corollas instead of F-18's, this was new and exotic.

Believe it or not, Mr. Ripley, if you are patient enough, when you coax an otherwise uncommitted tendril in the direction of a fixed object, in this case a tomato cage that has been impressed into service as a cucumber trellis, you can watch it begin its clinging intimacies.

This is not like watching the action at an NBA basketball game unless of course you were watching this past season's Charlotte Bobcats playing defense -- you really notice the movement less by seeing it than by comparing where the tendril was now to where it had been two minutes ago. Nonetheless, over the course of less time than it took for my coffee to grow cold, my little tendril buddy had begun to embrace its new found love, and it had indeed moved at an astonishing rate. Bobcat recruiters may well be planning to make an offer even as I write.

If you are so lucky as to have access to cucumber plant, I highly recommend you have a look at the tendrils. It is very entertaining...just don't stand in one place too long.