Morning Glories have been in my yard in several places since we moved here. They readily self-seed and are aggressive, so they come back all over the place every year. I have to pull tons of them, or they would choke out the vegetables, but where I can, I leave some in place because they are really so beautiful.
Another one of Lydia's gladiolas came up this week. They have been blooming one at a time, and most of them are in front of our statue of Mary, but this one is in the front bed. This bed looks pretty wild this year, but I kinda like that.
This book by Richard Furman has a good premise, in that he wants people to understand that they can prevent and control type 2 diabetes through diet and exercise, and without medication. However, the book is very repetitive. I believe it could have been about a third of the length, because he just restates his position several times. The first part of the book describes the effects of diabetes on the body, and the second part lays out his recommendations for making changes. Unfortunately, it basically reads that you should eat steel cut oats for breakfast and salads for lunch and dinner for the rest of your life. I think that most people would be discouraged to even try at that point. He is very against eating any red meat, eggs, desserts, cheese, etc (even to the point of calling co-workers "foolish" for eating cheese), but there are many studies showing the benefits of eggs, for example, in a diabetic diet, so his total avoidance strategy may be unnecessarily daunting. I also think it would have been helpful to address zero-calorie sweeteners, because many diabetics automatically exchange their cokes for diet cokes as a way to make dietary changes. Overall, the tone was more alarming and scholarly than encouraging. 
