I love this time of year where I can share my love of flowers with others who also love flowers. Cee has a wonder challenge with Flower of the Day where we see all sorts of plant life, such a fun challenge. Today, I am sharing my lilies. My white are open, and my red ones are just starting. I purchased some yellow one this year and they are open as well. My day lilies are just now starting to bud so those will be beautiful mid summer.
And I remind you as always, the value of kindness is a value that can never be measures.
The brightness of the full moon as it sneaks through the trees
Breaks open the cocoons of these sapphire blue beauties
Their life span is short, lasting only the cycle of the moon
Leaving much to do, for their time will end too soon.
If you are lucky enough for one to light softly on your fingers
You then will have a chance of wishing while it lingers
For once the wish is proclaimed and the butterfly is set free
It flies off to the Spirit where all wishes will come to be.
Anita Neal
This is a fun Monday prompt that Sadje is sponsoring and since I am a fan of butterflies, I just had to play along. Come join along with What do you see? and tell us what all you see.
And remember as with the beauty of nature, the beauty of kindness can also bring an inspiring moment. Try to always be kind.
We are taking it a little stretch with City Sonnets June challenges for today of the color red and water but since we are stuck inside today because of the weather, I think it fits.
My red dianthus in the rain. Its really beautiful standing tall in the sunshine.
Other reds are my red verbena and a red/yellow dahlia.
And as always, remember to always be kind. It spreads like ripples on a pond when used.
Growing up in south Georgia and north Florida, tropical weather is a norm. But now that I live in the Midwest, it’s kind of a weird phenomenon. Watching the clouds start rolling in last night against the setting sun were beautiful. The colors seemed to glow.
When looking at the radar this morning, I knew I had time to grab some quick photos before possible damage and then take all the hanging planters down as well as the bird feeders. The winds from the second storm coming from Nebraska on the tails of Cristobal seems to have worse wind potential and I down want plants flying about. Below are a few of the prettier flowers plus my lilies that are just opening. Hope that can stand the torrents. Come join in with Cee’sFlower of the Day.
And one last closeup of a ant wanting one last taste before the storm hits.
Remember that all of us are going through storms, some small, some huge. Never underestimate the value of kindness to help us survive life’s storms. Sometimes when we show kindness during our own storms, relief and peace can then surround us. Try to always be kind.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted about my fencing nightmare where the fence part finally got corrected from very poor installation. If interested, you can go here to read that post. I had promised in that post when I got the gate finished I would post that as well. The gate also was a nightmare that I am still working on to shave thickness off the frame as when it rains the wood swells and the gate won’t close without force. But my “gate mural” turned out okay. I am not an artist but I had fun, like I do with the adult coloring books.
The flowers, rabbits and butterflies are wood cutouts that I purchased plain and then painted. The reason for the haphazard of wood pieces for the door was to find pieces to go with what already was done to try to make it look decent. I don’t have a saw so my options were limited. The tree had wooded leaves but they were a clumsy to adhere and did not look like what I wanted so I took them off and painted on leaves. I still have 2 more flowers to paint and 3 more butterflies. At least I will have continuous flowers in my yard.
I am kind of good at out of the box thinking to pull odd things together to make a decent end project work. That is mostly what this project involved. But the purpose of the fence being able to keep the dogs off a chain and still protected was the main purpose, and that we have. So it’s all good.
I am tying in again with this month’s Escapist Coloring Club prompt as this was fun at relieving my stress of the poor construction of the fence.
And remember, even when you are faced with difficult tasks ahead, if you keep a positive attitude and smother it in kindness, good usually always rises to the top.
I am a day behind on Cee’s FOTD, Peonies, as that was yesterday but I had my fence flowers I wanted to show off yesterday as I finally got them planted. Her flower today is a gorgeous Iris. This is such a fun challenge and I need to take more pictures to have in my archive so when snow is on the ground I can still play with flowers. But today, it is my peonies. I started with one plant and now have three in the same area. I didn’t know they would do that.
In past years, when that would be in full bloom and smothered with flowers, the stems had a hard time holding up the weight of the blooms, so this year I added tomato cages to them to see if the support would help. We have not had a storm come though yet so we will see but the cages are hidden form the size of the bushes.
Such wonderful flowers. I would bring some inside but the ants love them too and are all inside the blooms. They don’t seem to damage the blooms so I leave them be.
And as always I remind you to be kind whenever you can. Sometimes it is real hard but we must try when we can.
Good evening friends and welcome to a new month. My hope and prayer is June will be a more gentle and loving month than May seemed to be. We are jumping from the fire of Covid-19 to the frying pan of chaos right now in this country, a frying pan that has no business being used as its main focus is to divide and destroy. So much chaos, so much anger, so much fear and so much destruction even through the smaller towns. We will be under curfew until this meanness goes away and who knows how long that will take. In Davenport last night there were two deaths and 4 injuries. One death was innocent 21 year old bystander buying groceries for a friend at Walmart, such a waste.
In my devotion this morning from My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald made a profound statement that is so relevant for today’s mindset in the USA.
“God’s Spirit continually reveals to His children what human nature is like apart from His grace.” Oswald Chambers
Read that again and understand its meaning. Without God’s control, the devil runs amuck.
The chaos is so far out of control from the original reason of the anger and has swelled to an ideal by those whose purpose is to divide and destroy. It has turned into a chaotic dragon and in my opinion the church on its knees is the only hope of this dragon being lassoed so that God will come back in and control that dragon. And by church I don’t mean the Catholic church or the Baptist church or the Methodist church…I mean God’s church. Those who loved the Lord, His word and follow His teachings.
2 Chronicles 7:14 says if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
It is a fearful time but our faith in God proves who is ultimately in control.
But we must do our part, we must remain strong. We are God’s church, His masterpiece of all things good.
We can help spread God’s light to those who live in the darkness and those who do not understand the power of the darkness as it engulfs them into evil ways.
So during this time of chaos, be strong in prayer and allow your light of Christ to shine brightly from you.
And even in the midst of chaos, be kind when you can.
Even though there may be gray hair on the head and wrinkles on the face…which I earned with life…I ain’t old yet.
Picture courtesy of Grandma Illustrations
After the nightmare of trusting the wrong company to put up a fence for me, them backing out half way done, then sending a single guy who tried to work with the mess they created…then putting the lattice sheets 8″ too high per county code, it is now almost completely corrected, and I did it myself. Ordered a drill from Amazon. I had posted earlier how they put the post in, left all the dirt in the yard for me to move and then the post were not all the same height, which means they are in the ground at different depths. Good grief! When the guy(and I) started adding the lattice, we saw the post were not even either. Below you will see the misaligned posts (thank goodness I am using plastic lattice), The front board height that I corrected next to height he had used, and the the boards not being the correct length on the inside and just put in haphazard.
My drill came Friday so Saturday I went to work and got the front sections to the correct height, which also meant I had to rehang the lattice sheets. But it is done. This morning after video church service, I put out my concrete block planters and added the flowers. Looks pretty good – not bad for a 69 year old turtle! It is not perfect but better than it was. And it serves the purpose of no have the dogs on a chain.
I am enclosing the pictures of the flowers that are in the block planters to tie in the Cee’sFlower of the Day. Since the dianthus around the mailbox did so well last year and came back beautifully this year, I felt like that is a less expensive planter situation and less likely someone to want to walk off with you planter of flowers.
In all this mess, I am at lease beginning to see the light of my vision and when the plant hangers are up and the gate is complete, I will repost those. The gate will make you laugh. And we all need a little laughter now a days as the US is imploding on itself.
In the chaos of life and stress we are all facing remember the value of kindness, a much needed value for right now…and always.
Good morning friends. Hope you are all well this morning. Do you ever have those times where you have understood for a long time meanings of certain scriptures but then you read a verse and a new understanding shows itself…a light bulb moment as it were.
I think this is how God uses His word to keep us be refreshed and on track, always learning something new…that we already knew one small part of it. Today’s devotion with My Utmost for His Highest was concerning the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We know the disciples had to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit arrived but the dots for me didn’t fully connect on Jesus having to be Glorified first before that could happen. He even told Mary to not hold him as he had not returned yet to the Father. I have always known Jesus was fully God and fully man and considered him our glorious Lord…but not at this point. The Holy Spirit was not given because Jesus had not ascended and was not yet glorified.
But Paul explained to the people during Pentecost what they were now seeing and hearing. The Holy Spirit was now being given freely to all of those who believed, about 3,000 that day, with growing numbers even today to where God’s love and Spirit covers the world to those who believe. We are reminded in today’s devotion that once the Holy Spirit was let lose into this world, it has remained forever.
Even Isaiah told us this was going to happen nearly 800 years prior to it happening.
“The attitude of receiving and welcoming the Holy Spirit into our lives is to be the continual attitude of a believer.” Oswald Chambers
Some think that when we die, we then live on in eternity but I think eternity is now and how we need to live day to day with the guiding of the Holy Spirit.
So breathe in today his love and allow the Spirit to guide you as you go.
Remember as you follow this spirit filled direction that God’s love is leading you on, His love for you is strong, so bring in this love and share it with others and always be kind.
For the Love of 