This is a test!

I am just playing around a little with my background and layout and wondered what you thought of the new look. Is it easier to read or harder. Does it improve the look or not make a difference. Just wondering what 6you thought. I like the way the photos pop. Let me know what you think.

Gardening

September is here in all her glory. I love this time of year, especially this year. The summer has been unbearably hot and humid and because I come from the west where the air is dry, I hate humidity. The rains fell hard in the spring washing out many of the crops and forcing farmers to plant and replant and pray for the rain to stop. God listened too well and the rains dried up and the heat baked my
garden, my lawn and my very heart and soul it seemed. I longed for rain, I prayed for rain and here and there we got just a tease of rain but nothing to really measure. Until today. Today, finally on the first Sunday in September the rain fell, not in a down pour that washed away all the dried, baked soil and not in a thunder storm that blew down the trees and bushes but in a steady soft rain that quenched the earth and caused the humming birds to dance and celebrate at my feeders.

I am a gardener in my heart and in my mind. I think it is the optimist in me. Because to be a gardener you must also be an optimist. You must believe that when you place tiny seeds in the warm earth that something beautiful or tasty will rise up in their place. Thomas Jefferson once said. "Though an old man, I am but a young gardener." That is how I see myself. Never do I feel more alive or younger than when I have my hands in the warm soil and even though I know my muscles will ache tomorrow and I will wonder why I torture myself this way, today I have no question as the why I garden. It brings me joy and it brings me fresh produce and it brings beauty into my small corner of the earth. Or perhaps what Thomas Jefferson was referring to was the knowledge that no matter how many years I garden there will always be new things to learn, new methods to try and new plants to nurture. Gardening doesn't grow old it just grows richer with age.

Henry Beecher once said, "Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into." My husband always asks me why I spend so much of my time and yard space planting flowers instead of just planting fruits and vegetables. I guess my only answer to that question is, "They bring me and others that pass my house, JOY, pure unadulterated JOY. They are God's art." Claude Monet once said, "I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers." I love to paint (not professionally, I'm not that good). I love to put paint onto canvas and see what I end up with but I have always known that I will create more beauty by burying seed in the earth and waiting for God to bring them to life than I will ever accomplish by painting. I am not Monet but my flower garden can bring the beauty of his works to life and that beauty feeds my spirit as I tend them and as I sit and enjoy their colors, textures and movement.

I always credited my mother for my love of gardening and especially the flowers but she has since told me that she doesn't think she is as much of a gardener as I am. So maybe it was my grandmothers, one growing her many, varied irises by the side of the house and the other her roses and magnificent vegetable garden or maybe it was just my love of beauty and cooking that sparked my interest. But whatever the reason I find that gardening is my escape from the stresses of life. It calms me when I am worried and energizes me when I am weary. The Koran puts it like this, "Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul."

I am not a gardener that is particular about each and every weed that enters my garden. I know that in Southern Indiana if you want zero weeds in your garden than you better plan to spend most of your summer hours in that garden pulling them out. Instead I try to remember the wisdom of some of the great gardeners. Emerson once said, "what is a weed? A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been
discovered." Anyone who has ever looked at Joe Pye weed or Queen Anne's lace can attest to that. They are a beautiful purple flower and a delicate white flower that grow wild in Southern Indiana in the fields. They are great for cutting and using in bouquets or just admiring as you drive down the road. But the locals would have you believe they are weeds. I have always loved morning glories ever since I was a child. How can you not love a beautiful vine that is covered in blue, bell-shaped flowers in the morning and closes in the heat of the day,only to re-open the next morning. But when I moved to Indiana and planted them on the side of my house, I was told by the farmer, whose corn field bordered my yard, that he spends more time and money fighting morning glories than any other weed. So again I quote another gardener, "What is a weed? I have heard it said that there are sixty definitions. For me, a weed is a plant out of place." Donald Culross Peattie. I was shocked as I watched my Granny standing by her flower bed yanking out full grown tomato plants with tomatoes on them saying, "I didn't plant that and I didn't plant that."when I questioned her about why she would do such a thing she replied. "They are weeds." I challenged her with, "No, they are tomatoes" and she smiled and responded, "If I didn't plant them, then they are weeds." Not so in my garden, not so. If I like them, they stay. If I don't like where they are, I move them but they are still planted and given a chance at life, unless of course, they become invasive and start to choke off my other plants, then they sacrifice their right to life.

So back to today. It is September, September 4th to be exact and I am praising God for the gentle rain that fell on my garden and praising Him for the joy and peace that my garden brings into my life. I am a believer, a person of faith, an optimist so I will share one more quote that I love. Henry David Thoreau said, "Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders." So plant your seeds, whether the kind that are buried in the earth or the seeds that you plant in your life, in your heart or the hearts of others and then sit back and watch as God brings beauty into your world and into the worlds of those around you.