Whether you like morning glories or not, you have to appreciate their steadfast beauty in contrast to the charred garage they were planted right next to in these pix.

You also have to know the story behind them, and what it means to me to have them look like that at this time. If you don't want to read the long version, the short version is "Beauty from Ashes". If you are interested in the long version, read on.

Years ago when I lived in Seal Beach California, I would walk the few blocks to the beach and on the way there were the most beautiful blue morning glories growing on a mailbox. Now, I don't know if it is just me or everyone that has a certain flower that brings joy to their heart and makes them want to stop and admire their beauty or take in their fragrance. For me, that very specific flower is the morning glories I saw on that mailbox. They were so richly bright & deep in shades of blue, so abundantly full in their blooms that hardly any leaves were seen, and I truly would stop and just look at them in awe.

Ok, fast forward to living back home in Texas, with me trying to re-create that vision many many times here with having no natural green thumb at all. Apparantly they are more like a weed than a flower, and have no real smell at all, but I still had that vision and I really wanted to have it up close. I have always gotten them to grow, but only with sparse blooms or small blooms....always always with tons of leaves and vines, not very pretty much less a sight that brought joy to my heart.

This past year has been a testing and somewhat disappointing one, but for some reason that vision of morning glories got closer this summer & fall than ever before. Many mornings and evenings I watched as slowly but surely blooms got bigger and leaves got smaller. These beauties are not exactly like those I saw in Seal Beach quite yet, but better yet they are my own personal snapshot, taken by God just for me to see at the exact time I needed to the most...that moment in time when I walked completely through the burnt & flooded shell of a house which was no longer our home.

Indeed it was there that I was able to praise God from the depths of my heart like never before.

Jeremiah 29:11

~Christine~