Gazing at my Garden

This year has been a wonderful year for my front yard gardens...each year more and more volunteers come up to join ranks with the perennials I have planted and spread the joy of color and texture. I love the blends. I could sit for hours just gazing at the intricacies of the different plants and critters that invade them. I share some of my hosta, azaleas and bulbs with the deer, but have found a new spray that will discourage snacking which has allowed for more blooms...I am blessed.

I spent an hour the other day taking snapshots of caterpillars, beetles, moths, bees, and other (unknown) critters visiting my plants. I had to laugh as I used an entire role of film and could have taken more...it just delights me so! I was using a regular 35mm camera, but am eager to get a memory stick for my ancient digital camera ~ I have always used a floppy disc, but those are not as easy to come by any more and I do need to become more techno savvy~ then I can take pics to my heart's delight. Plus, this camera has an amazing way of zooming in on plants that is sometimes breathtaking. I have several of my photos framed in my office and they bring me refreshment when I desire to look away from the mess of papers and computer screen.

I leave tomorrow for a week with my sister (playing with my newest niece and my nephews!). I am blessed to be going and eager to see her, but today I started wondering how my gardens would be when I got home. It is the time when the sunflowers are bowing their heads in submission to another end of their growing season. The birds are delighted as the seeds will soon be dropping (all of my sunflowers were volunteers this year ~ it was amazing and wonderful to see so many come up on their own after thinking they would be annuals!). My zinnias have just peaked as well as the blackeyed susans and echinacia and cosmos. I have about twenty five rose buds about to burst into bloom, and creeping pansies going wild. The coral bells are shedding, and various annuals are in full bloom...I am only waiting on my bachelor buttons which got a late start this year, and my grassess that are a reddish color and the coleus that was a bit dry before the rains. I think I may return to another color scheme and design. I am hopeful...

How gracious God is to provide such a variety of growing seasons for plants. We can be blessed with colors and leaves throughout the year. Those like me who love plants and color can slowly add blooms and varieties to their gardens to maintain some kind of life all year long. I enjoy the winter time when most are dormant except the evergreens and some rather hardy plants, but my delight is in the profusion of colors, textures and scents...I think if there were not that period of dormancy, I wouldn't appreciate as fully the new life each spring, summer and fall...what an awesome God we have ~ "Look how the wild flowers grow. They don't work hard to make their clothes. But I tell you that Solomon with all his wealth wasn't as well clothed as one of them. God gives such beauty to everything that grows in the fields, even though it is here today and thrown into a fire tomorrow. He will surely do even more for you!" (Matthew 6:28-30)