Vines Gone Wild

I love my vines, and by the end of the summer they are in their prime, often gone slightly wild. Above is my sweet autumn clematis, which is cut down to the ground in March,  and just look at it now! It would be climbing over the house if I let it. I keep trimming it so that we can get through the gate, but it's hard to keep up with it. In an other few weeks it will be totally covered with little white flowers.

One of my very favorite vines is hyacinth bean vine, which I first saw many years ago at Monticello. I brought home some seeds and have been planting it most every summer since. They are the purplish leaves shown above and below. They get a beautiful lavender flower and dark purple seed pods in the fall. It's a spectacular vine. I'm going to plant more next year.

And of course I have lots of Virginia Creeper. I didn't plant this, it just appeared and I like it. It can be invasive so I cut it back quite a bit in the spring.

And Akebia covers about half of my fence. It's pretty invasive too, but it's so pretty and good at covering an open area like a fence. It gets pretty little purple flowers in the spring.