Rose of Sharon

I met my husband Jeff on Match.com, and one of the things he liked about my profile was that I had answered the "What was the last great book you read?" question with The Grapes of Wrath. It was one of those books that had somehow slipped through the cracks of my reading life, and I remember finishing it while sitting on a bench in Chicago's Union Station. The devastating ending made me cry. One of the characters in that book is named Rose of Sharon, and I always thought that was so unusual. Last year we were shopping for plants to decorate our new patio, and I flipped out when I came across a blue rose of Sharon. After planting it, we waited for about a month for it to bloom, and this is a painting of the first rose we saw.