Zen Garden, Country Style

 

The fruit of fall

For days they held me prisoner to their fragrance and fragile beauty. The apple blossoms seemed neverending.  Friday morning the sunrise revealed their brilliance through the light frost from the night before.



I thought they would last forever.



White and pink against the blue.  And the frenzied humming of busy bees.



Night came. The sun rose and brought with it a light rain.  As the rain fell, so also the petals.



First one, then another, and then another cascaded to the ground below.



Perfumed clusters of white lay silent..



They shed their beauty upon mud, metal, asphalt, grass.  Whatever lay beneath.



A profusion of surrender.



Lending their fragrance to all they touched.



Soon it will all be over, just a memory of spring.



A memory that will live on in the sweet, red fruit of fall.

Lilacs for Laurel

It was the time of blooms when she came to us. Her name had been waiting for her, victorious one, long before she was born. As she was placed in her Daddy's arms, her cries subsided into quiet contentment.

Her big brother, born in the heat of summer 22 months before, tightly held his blanket and sucked his thumb as he gazed in wonder at her newness.



She would become a lover of kittens, Strawberry Shortcake and the New Kids on the Block. And then, almost overnight, she herself bloomed.



Has it really been 30 years since that day we first held you?



You will always be our victorious one, our beautiful little girl, our joy, our beloved, spreading everywhere His fragrance.



Happy Birthday, Laurel.

"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him." 2 Corinthians 2:14

A dream of Texas in the Spring

Up here in the Frozen North, winter is a defiant child who refuses to go to bed. We had experienced a wonderful 2 weeks of spring weather and a glorious Easter profuse with blossom burdened flowering trees and bushes. And then. . .



Saturday I shivered as the cold rain drizzled, and pulled the covers over my eyes as the snow flurries appeared followed by tiny hailstones.

And then I dreamed. A dream of Texas in the Spring.



Yes, Texas heat in the height of summer can be as tough and unrelenting as the Rangers and cowboys who made the state famous, but in the Spring...

In the Spring we have mild, cool days and beautiful bluebonnets,



indian blanket, paintbrush,



winecups, primrose, prairie verbena.



All in unimaginable profusion.



And the perfume that hangs on the air IS the air. Each Spring, the beauty of the bluebonnets lifts its siren call to young and old, "come, rest, enjoy."

I smile thinking of Texas in the Spring and awake to the visitation of Jack Frost on the windshield, his icy calling card spread out on the lawns and fields. It will vanish with the rising of the noonday sun.

But in Texas, in Texas the bluebonnets fill every creature with awe.



Even the cows.

This is where I want to live

This is where I want to live.

In a robin egg blue house nestled in the bloom of spring.



With songbirds singing at the cream colored windows and rainbow explosions at my feet.



The air is filled with exotic perfumes of cherry,



and Japanese magnolia,



and daffodil.



A soft carpet of green covers the ground and the skies are endless blue and cotton white.



It's a place where warm, orange sunsets bathe the horizon,



roads are lined with flowering trees

and forest ponds are magical.



There is no winter here,



nor weeds, nor allergies.

This is where I want to live.