"Rose of Sharon"

I love purple and I also love Hibiscus. I didn't know that you could have a purple Hibiscus. Until yesterday, when my daughter cut a couple of these flowers for me... Yes, they were growing in our backyard! How cool is that?

And so I painted them... and painted them... This is the third attempt. When my husband asked me what I was painting, I said I was painting a Hibiscus from our backyard. He did not believe me. He said what we had in the backyard was the Rose of Sharon, not Hibiscus. Well, I said, they really look like Hibiscus to me... Of course, the matter was settled by the internet - we googled Rose of Sharon, and of course Hibiscus flowers came up... We googled Hibiscus, and Rose of Sharon came up... The fine prints said something about "cultivars" as the reason for the nice lavender variety.

"Thank you, Lord, for the colorful and fragrant flowers... for the language that they speak to us... the language of love and friendship... Thank you, Lord, for our friends, they are the flowers in the garden of life."

This time the line from that poem comes to mind... " a rose, by any other name... "
is a hibiscus!