When the neglected grape arbor and wild cherry trees take over because you let yourself and the backyard go, the sweet grapevine uses the trees to climb climb climb higher and higher up into the sky, looking like a beanstalk you too could ascend to heaven on in a green shady summer dream.

You didn’t trade anything except the illusion of perfection and impossibility of keeping up with the Joneses, though, to sprout this vision climbing into the blue sky. All by itself, the grapevine knows what to do.

Before you know it, globes of rusty-purple sweetness will decorate this dreamvine. You will taste the juicy fruitfulness of letting things go all the way UP, defying gravity. Defying propriety. Showing you that trying to force perfection is not where the flavor is found.

Just for now, the sweetness is manufactured far over your head with a life of its own. Untrained tendrils clambering on tree-twigs too fragile for you to climb except in your most featherweight, unburdened imagination. Elevating you to work with and take pleasure in exactly what you’ve already got, and is growing up strong all on its own.