Lettuce Plant a Flower!

Danny and Hannah picking some tender large lettuce leaves from Carrie's raised bed.

The flower bed we filled with flowers Saturday. It was one of the happiest days we've had in months.

Every last one of us were outside in the cool of the morning, working on and around the front porch. While Sam and boys worked on bicycles, some of us were trying to decide how we wanted to arrange the flowers we'd bought.

I told Jonathan my idea about hanging flowerpots up in the corner to keep them protected from wind, rain, goats, chickens and beating hot sun. And this is what he came up with.

I just loved the tiered effect. Time and again, we've gone out and sat for a few brief moments in that wonderful Amish Hearts porch swing that I bought a couple years ago for our anniversary--and just tried to take time to breathe.

And we arranged the petunias and daisies by the door.

This is what it looked like behind the scenes! It was such a blessing to have Jonathan home to help.

I also had to pat myself on the back for allowing myself to spend money on a bunch of flowers. I felt like I needed them.

Fixing bikes to have a bike ride together later.

The girls have a cucumber plant growing indoors.

...because it just doesn't work well to plant outdoors. Somehow Friday, the children who picked lettuce for our sandwiches left the screen off Carrie's beautiful raised bed, and when we came home, this is what we found--everything stripped bare and all eaten up by the young chickens that had squeezed through the yard fence. Needless to say, Carrie was in tears.

And when we've been stripped bare of everything worthy and lovely, and all that is left is a stem and a root, 

we go and we plant flowers.

Because a person's character shows up when they've been beaten and scorned and crucified and shredded, and all that is left is a stick--and a root.

Christ was, said the prophet Isaiah, not at all beautiful or worthy to look at or esteem. He was like a "root out of dry ground." [How pretty is that?] 

Yet, He bore our sins and carried our sorrows, though He was ill esteemed and afflicted.

I read in one of the gospels Sunday, how Christ cast out a demon, and despite the wonderful thing He had done, the religious folk decided that He had done it through the power of the devil. 

So then Jesus had to defend Himself, and say, "How can Satan cast out Satan? A house divided against itself falls."

If Christ, the sinless, faultless Lamb of God, was so brutally criticized, falsely accused and treated like He was the devil, then how can we expect to fare any better? We can just expect that when we are trying to serve Him and do His will, there will always be those who are sure we are doing it out of a devilish motive. Convinced of that, they will start picking at our faults, of which there are many, for we are very undivine, and not all-knowing and all-wise as our Lord was, and our heads are not always caught up with our hearts.

But when our vegetable garden has been despoiled by the enemy, we choose to plant flowers--and have a wonderfully happy time doing it!