April 27, 2012

Dripping Dry

Whew!  Had to get away from staring at words on a screen and thinking, thinking, thinking and take a stroll around the ‘loop’…up the street, and around through the forest, back out at the ‘green field’ and down the hill home after dropping into a friendly neighbor’s house—home to these bright faces:

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Lots of eager shoots and blooms dripping dry after a lot of rain earlier in the afternoon.  new growthP1060313

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A fern unfurling in a field fairly bursting with growth…

fern unfurling

The wild cherry blossoms are none the worse for the weather…

cherry blossoms

and look as if they were wedding attendants dressed in their fairest spring frocks—

 

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P1060308 Their petals have been scattered like confetti.  Spring is celebration time!

 

This old stump along the way is one season closer to be overtaken by the growth it nourishes…

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forget me not

And not to be forgotten, these bright blue miniatures are blooming in a roadside ditch…
The rains are gone.  Spring is bursting out all over! 

Behold, He makes all things new…

--LS

“The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come and the voice of [ a thousand bull frogs!] is heard in our land.” Song of Solomon 2:12

April 20, 2012

Still there is beauty…

 

“I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.” Ps.27:3

 blue flower2“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin….” (Mt.6:28)  God clothes them, temporary though they are… 

His attention to detail, His love of beauty is…incredible.

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Not even a violet blooms in the woods without His awareness…

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What a gift such beauty is to the likes of us!

How can I look at the daisy’s happy face and not have my own brightened?

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It is remarkable to me that even as the world seems to grow darker and more lost in the ugliness and destruction of evil, yet the seasons continue. 

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Spring comes and flowers bloom in all their unique and graceful beauty.  The sun rises and light shines reflecting their brilliance. 

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And I am reminded that God is good. His ways are perfect.  All beauty comes from Him… How kind He is not to suspend its display to the undeserving.  How ugly the world would be then…

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From the grandest to the tiniest each bloom is exquisite in design, revealing a Creator who cares about the details and lavishes His grace on all who will stoop to see it…

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Sometimes it will take some effort.  I was tugging away at a tangle of crab grass in my now overrun ‘Flower Corner’, hoping to find some evidence of flowers returning, when I found this lone tulip.  I do not know where it came from.  I’ve never intentionally planted tulips here.  And this one is my favorite color:

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I’m so glad I spent the energy to see what lay beneath that tangle…Let us have eyes to look more closely to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.  He reigns!

Gertie  --LS

*Original watercolor inspired by Oliver Dunrea’s Gossie and Gertie, Houghton Mifflin, 2002.