Kinda Pink and Sunny Bougainvillea

pink bougainvillea in the gleaming sun

It took almost eighteen years for our kinda pink, kinda magenta, yet (almost) always sunny Bougainvillea to grow from a small plant till it covered an area of approximately nine square meters.

I guess growing a bougainvillea flower (called bracts) is a matter of faith, although it is a drought-tolerant vine. For at least five or seven years after plating it, the bougainvillea was just a brown stick with leaves. But we hoped, forgotten about it, then hoped some more.

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Wooden Doors of a Medieval Chapel, Snagov Monastery #Im4Ro

Snagov monastery, paraclis wood carved doors

Almost 600 years old, these wooden doors of a medieval chapel, long sunken they say, built around 1453 near Snagov Monastery, 40 km northward from Bucharest, can still be admired in the Art Museum of Bucharest.

For the weary traveler, approaching the chapel as a meditation, its wooden doors with their visual and scripting messages would have been the first welcoming sign: arms folded in prayer, ready to open, to receive, and to fold around, in absolution.

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