Flowers

Don't get all panicky about this new loooong layout. I'm just deciding what I think. It isn't necessarily here to stay (especially because it made the picture placement of older posts all wacky, and my little picture of Abe at the top of my blog looks to overwhelmed all lonely in white space). Besides, you know I don't dare to shake things up much, so . . . like I said . . . just seeing for a minute.

Anyway, there are likely (well, I mean surely) many things of beauty on this earth that I take for granted or neglect to notice. You know, sunsets maybe would be one. I mean pretty much every evening the sky is spectacular. When I took a painting class in 6th grade, I was always aware of sunsets -- mostly because I would look at them and think, "That is crazy! No one would ever think of painting that because it doesn't even look real!" Which of course caused me to marvel at how beautiful. Since, however, I shamefully admit to having noticed far fewer sunsets (except for maybe in Israel where we were always watching sunsets -- which, might partly explain why the lens prescription needed for my eyes doubled during that short four months).

Still, there is one beauty of nature that I never ever fail to notice. Flowers. And bless all of your little hearts who thought to bury your little tulip and daffodil bulbs clear last Fall. I love them! And if you are hoping that anyone even notices or cares that you went to the trouble, know that I do. I find myself looking at the flowers of every house I ever run or drive past. One house in particular that I drive past every day nearly takes my breath away. The house itself is a plain small gray rectangle of a house, but it has tulips of every color just packed all around it. It is seriously something that, I don't know, I guess that I honestly see as one of God's miracles. I love green and mountains, etc. But a flower -- what on earth!? Just a perfectly shaped brightly colored thing -- just real and growing? Amazing.

Once Mike and I went on a hike far off somewhere (I don't know where exactly -- we drove Mike's truck up a miserably bumpy road for almost an hour before even beginning our long hike). As we hiked back down we decided to walk over a hill that wasn't on the path but that lead in the same direction we were headed. As we reached the top and headed down the other side, our eyes met with thousands of red wild flowers. I never would have imagined that a flower growing all on its own off in the middle of nowhere could be so bold and pretty. Can wildflowers really do that? I constantly find myself wishing I could remember exactly when in the year that was so we could go find them again. It seems so quiet and strange to have something so gorgeous just happily growing and dieing all in its own loveliness with no one else there to see it.

Anyway, enough of that. I have a decidedly black thumb. Our yard will be a disaster for some time to come I imagine. My friend Kelly (whose Summer backyard would make even the very most indifferent to nature's beauties swoon) came over the other day out of sheer kindness to give me a little direction. Of course now that she is gone, my confidence is once again wavering. But she told me how I could actually move some little bushes I don't like, and even get rid of some other stuff to make room for things I do want. I was like, "Really?? Can I do that?" Still, she is going to meet me in a week or two at a nursery and help me get a few flowers. She is wise because she sees that I am overwhelmed, so my main goal for this Summer is just to get our front flower bed looking good (yikes, we'll see!!) and then to simply work on weeding the disastrous beds in the back.

Here is a picture of one year when I really had something going on in the flower department. It was in our WA home and truthfully, was laid out rather poorly with big things blocking smaller things and so forth, but I was quite in love with the fact that I'd had so many flowers actually grow!