Sunday, July 09, 2006

Unexpected Beauty

Darren is, by all standards, a self proclaimed "cactus geek". He loves the spiny little things to such an extent that, in our rapidly growing city, he rescues them from the desert before builders clear the land amid constantly emerging developments. This love affair began quite innocently enough when we were first married and our landlady gave him a single cactus in a terra cotta pot. For him, it was love at first sight, but quite frankly, I thought it was dreadful and, for the most part, chose to ignore it while patiently indulging him and his new treasure...that is, until the thing bloomed and I saw what a splendidly beautiful flower could come from such a menacing little plant! It was gorgeous. And to be honest, I was a little embarrassed that I had lived my entire life in the desert southwest without ever appreciating the potential these prickly plants possessed. His collection has grown from that lonely little cactus on our front porch to include, over time, hundreds more, many of which made the move with us when we moved to our new house four years ago. We've now got an entire portion of our backyard devoted to them, and I continue to be astounded by their amazing beauty.

How wondrous is our God.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous. You have good taste.

Anonymous said...

You are not alone. I have over 1,000 of these in our back yard that my wife patiently tolerates. Like you, she loves the flowers. Try to encourage Eric to grow them from seeds instead of buying or collecting them. They grow so slowly they won't take over your house and yard quite so quickly.

Anonymous said...

Very nice flower.

Anonymous said...

BTW:

Melissa, you may want to go into your template settings and turn on "word verification" for your blog.

It makes you type in some letters on the screen before you can submitt your message. It's an effect tool against all the spam bots that one day may find your blog.

Nice work and good luck.