One of my favorite wild plants is Virginia Creeper. It’s that red plant in the photo below, which I took more than two years ago while wandering back roads in Central Virginia. I think it’s incredibly beautiful vine with an ideally shaped leaf and a gorgeous fall color range from green to gold to red.

I was lucky enough to have some creeper growing up my chimney, but in the course of taking the old house down and building this new one, I seem to have damaged my vine. On a whim I stuck a scraggly stem in a vase of water and set it in my kitchen window. I forgot about it until the other day when I looked up from washing dishes and saw a brand-new leaf, pale green and translucent. Maybe it’s not the end of my creeper!