July 15 | Alafia: It’s mid-July in central Florida, and the Alafia is full of monsoon rain {The Florida Monsoon}. Its waters seem to rise a yard in a day and then drop by the same order, days later. Deadfall that has rested over the winter in safety, is now pushed to the banks by the surge, or split down the middle and sent adrift to the bay. The river swells into the backswamp, carrying an invertebrate stew into a copse of ferns and cypress knees. It’s cleaned of its clutter and dead, sandy bottoms swept and bedrock washed free of spirogyra. I at once believe in nothing that the fate of so many wondrous things can be decided by the whim of a rising river.
But, in the canopies of ash and oak, a great moonflower blanket has been gently laid {The Moonflowers of Florida}. Its twining vines drink deep from the bankful river more than twenty yards below. The shadows of an impending storm unfurl the moonflower’s pedals revealing a great white skirt that flutters and dances in eddies of wind. And when the light bears down again, the delicate pedals curl into a fist that shakes at the sun, and I at once believe in everything.
Moon Flower is Ipomoea alba and worth looking up in “Wiki” for a reference (MIT) of how crushed vines mixed…
If you enjoy what you read, please smash the like and share buttons below!
blackwaterletters.com 
Thanks, Diane. See:https://blackwaterletters.com/2020/12/18/the-moonflowers-of-florida/