I’ve learned my lesson. Well, pretty much. When it comes to plants, I don’t really do “delicate.” I know folks who have greenhouses and hothouses, and they grow beautiful things. I grow beautiful things, too, but they have to be sturdy. I do purchase and plant things that are annuals (they don’t usually live through the winter). But I’m most fond of the perennial plants, the plants that I put in the ground once and they return each spring. This year, of course, things are somewhat different, after the epic ice and snow and very low temperatures we had in February. It’s April now, and if some plants haven’t returned, then I’m thinking that they’re not going to.
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- These slender plants are Nandinas. They were quite bare after the big February freeze. I was anxious about them. My dad planted them years and years ago, and I was afraid that they were too frail for the freeze.
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- But, they DID recover. Well, four of them did, putting out new leaves.
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- The fifth plant was bare, bare, bare, for weeks. Now, it’s putting out small, barely visible leaves. We’ll just have to wait and see if it’s decided to commit to living.
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- This is how a bed at the side of the house looked a few weeks ago. This pile-of-sticks-looking thing was a lantana plant.
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- This is the pomegranate. I trimmed it down to the ground, where there were new leaves coming up.
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- Now, I’ve replaced the lantana. The pomegranate is pruned back, and I discovered another lantana below the pomegranate.
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- I love hostas, but I’ve had hit and miss luck with them, over the years. In the house where we lived when the boys were growing up, I had a few of them, and they bloomed and were lovely. I’ve tried them in a few places in our current back yard, with limited success. Of the three I planted last year, only that one in the center came back. I purchased the two on either side, hoping that keeping hostas alive in this bed would be a trend. (That small green plant at the front of the hostas is a little plant, one of five I bought a couple of years ago. It’s the only one that survived.)
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- There had been a hosta plant that put up a lovely flower last year. That old stem was still in the ground, and last week, I leaned over to break it off and discovered, oh yes, small green leaves.
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- And, now, it’s ‘way too close to the new plant!
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- Why, oh, why, did it wait so long to show up!?! Now, that new plant is too close to that established one, and I’m not sure how large it’s going to be!
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- So, I moved the new one to a further away space. That newly emergered plant had better come up nicely and look good! I hope I can figure out what it’s name is. And, then, ‘way over on the left, is a small (I think) hosta that’s been there a couple years. I don’t know what it’s name is, either.
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- Meanwhile, a couple of weeks ago, I looked out the kitchen window, and saw this. I stared. I wondered. It looked a little like a cat. I hadn’t noticed cats in the yard, though, a few months ago, I found large amount of bird feathers in this same space, which DID indicate that there were hungry felines in the area. But, it never moved, and I walked out to be sure of what I was seeing, and wasn’t seeing.
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- And, this is what I found. Just pieces of wood, from old limbs. Things Peter liked to play with.
I pointed the shape out to David, and he said that, yeah, he’d noticed it, and, at first, thought it might be a squirrel. When Peter came, a week ago, I called his attention to it, and said that, when I first saw it, I thought it was a cat, maybe. And David said that he thought it might be a squirrel. And Peter looked at us and said, “It’s a piece of wood.” Ah, nature.
Outside and inside, of me, of what surrounds me, the sunrise, the sunset, the grass, the flowers, the trees. Life and love, friends and family. What makes me ponder, what surprises me, what comforts me, what’s worth singing and shouting our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!
Always an appropriate way to begin or end a message!
He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! How can we keep from singing/
Yes, indeed. How CAN we keep from singing!