I’ve mentioned before how much I like living in Midtown Toronto. One of the things I love about it is how it’s still full of little houses, front gardens and alleys.

One of these alleys has a special meaning for me. It’s part of the path that connects my place to my partner’s place (we chose to live together apart, and we are a 15-minute walk from each other).

A couple of years ago, I noticed these climbing flowers growing on this path. They came in shades of purple and pink and only open up in the morning or when it’s cloudy.

I googled it and discovered they’re called Morning Glories, a name given by its habit of unfurling in the early morning or even at night. This is the common name of a lot of different varieties. This one in particular is the Ipomoea purpurea, native to Mexico. I also learned that after the flowers are gone, they store their seeds in a little pod.

This got me thinking – if I harvest the seeds and sow them along the path we’d have way more flowers next year! I checked online first to see if they were an invasive species – the Ipomoea purpurea is not. And then I set myself to work in the Spring last year. Every time I went through the path I’d discretely harvest some seeds and spread them across the bare areas.

Until I was caught.

This older guy – Mr. Sergio – saw me close to his house by the fence and came to talk to me. I opened up and said that the flowers were really nice and that I was gathering the seeds and spreading them around. To my surprise, he actually approved of my idea, and said that his son and he were buying more than 1,000 seeds to create a Morning Glory fence by his house!

I told him about the pods and he said he knew about it, but his son insisted on buying seeds. I then asked him if I could harvest the seeds, and he said I could take as many as I wanted.

By July that year (Morning Glories are late bloomers), one side of the path was taken by the purple flowers. The other side was still bare. So what I did last March, knowing that Mr. Sergio and his family were already taking care of the right wall, was to focus on spreading my seeds on the left side.

And this is the result we have this year!

Ok, I don’t know if I can take credit for all the flowers on the left side, maybe some birds and the wind also helped. But I’m sure some of the seeds there are my doing.

Not satisfied with the corridor itself, I expanded my gardening guerilla to other areas surrounding the path. I causally dropped seeds in a patch of green by the road, that seemed to belong to no one…

and I started sowing the seeds by the fence of a nursing home building we have across the street.

There the flowers are still shy (I don’t know if it gets direct sun), but they’re coming up!

There is still more work to do though. With more and more flowers growing we’ll have more seeds to cover more areas. The nice thing is that I don’t need to sow where the vines are growing, since nature will take care of that. But there are still bare patches that could be covered in the fence behind the path. And I need to double down my efforts on the nursing house fence.

I know it’s just some flowers growing here and there, but I’m proud of my work. On my mission to cover the neighbourhood with Morning Glories, I feel like I’m not just passing by or living here, but I’m also helping shape the my little corner of Midtown.

I’ll have some more sowing to do next Spring. I’ll keep you guys updated.