I just had to tell someone about how good God was to me today. Peggy and I enjoy our flower garden and the wildlife in the back yard.
The garden has been planted with a staged blooming of seasonal spring flowers starting with the crab apple and cherry trees.
Then come the tulips, crocus, lupin, peonies, baloon flower and lillies
Followed by the daisies and lilies. The black eyed susans then come out for most of the summer, but are just beginning to bloom now.
We have a picture window from our kitchen and a deck that overlooks the landscaped hillside that slopes toward the house with a fish pond and a waterfall surrounded by bird feeders to attract finches, cardinals and of course squirrels and chipmunks. The peonies on the table are all picked from the garden
Other wildlife includes Millie watching the fish. She manages to get in just about every picture because she follows me everywhere I go.
The far corner of the garden had some sweet basil growing, but it had become very overgrown with weeds so we cleared and mulched it but weren’t sure what to do with the resulting bare spot.
Peggy suggested roses as she and I enjoy growing and cutting them. I got excited and even got seven empty pots out and put them in the empty space to get an idea how they would fit. We went to look for roses at a local nursery yesterday. They didn’t have much and what they had was kind of sorry looking and overpriced at about $25 per plant. We also talked about Hydrangeas, which we already have in our yard and are even more expensive than roses. So I said, “Well maybe we’ll stop by Lowes later and see what they have.”
We sort of put it off, but I went to church this morning for street ministry and afterwards stopped at Lowes on my way home. I was wandering around looking at everything and praying that the Lord would show me a good deal and when I walked in the back there were about 5 large racks of various flowers both annuals and perennials that were marked half off. They were kind of dried out so I asked a worker and she said they were under watered and then overwatered but that they should come back just fine.
Then she said that I could fill up a flat with as many as I could get on there for $25! I had to ask her twice and there was another guy there who started loading up and even though I was skeptical at first I started picking through some of the Hydrangeas and then the worker brought out a bunch of roses and I was in heaven. I loaded up the cart as full as I could get it – it was one of those flat carts that have two levels.
Here’s what I ended up with:
5 Magnifica pink Rose bushes ($15 ea)
4 Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangea bushes ($25 ea)
4 Yellow Tiny Bee Lilies
1 Pink Lily
36 various color petunias
4 1qt red Geraniums
3 sweet potato vines (the guy said they had a nice light green contrast to the lilies)
The total retail price would have been $255. God is good and I am glad He enjoys blessing
his children with good things.
The story continues because I had my two seater Mazda with
me so it was kind of funny loading all these plants in the passenger seat next
to me but I managed to get them all in.
When I sat down I noticed that I had a message on my phone. It was the hospital that I had made a
proposal for a 6 to 12 month project six weeks earlier and had been praying and
expecting to hear from any day. The
executive that needed to review the proposal had been out of the office for six
weeks and had just returned. She let me
know that she was ready to discuss moving the proposal forward with her boss. I was so excited on the way home I didn’t
know which blessing I was going to write about first. God gives abundantly far and above all we can
think or ask.Allan
