The flower garden

Trees and flowers are blooming and gardens are being planted.

Birds are building nests and the warm sun beats down.

For, Lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth. Song of Solomon 2:11-12

Nature is orderly and orchestrated.

Except for my flower bed.

This morning, with hoe in hand, I surveyed a tangle of weeds, dead leaves and stubble, but also new growth persistently pushing its way through the tangle of last year's remnants.

Plants, growing wild, are invading my sidewalk, searching for who knows what.

The white and yellow daffodils are blooming as they trumpet warmer days. Even though they've been mowed down, tramped on, each year they survive and burst into bloom.

I wandered lonely as a cloud,

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils;

Besides the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

The new growth in my flower garden is being crowded, cluttered by both dead and new life.

Just as our lives get cluttered. The rumble of life hides the peace and quiet of God's whispers.

There are so many superfluous activities that keep us from focusing on the important things.

We fill our days with projects and duties that smother out those things that really matter.

We go to and fro like those daffodils fluttering in the breeze, trying to fit in those things we feel we must do. The busyness takes over; promises broken and forgotten..

No time to share or visit Or to write that long letter to a friend.

I begin to hoe the flower bed.

What to keep and what to hoe?

Would it be better just to hoe everything down and start over?

The green hostas leaves are pushing their way through the earth.. The lily-like plants will grow tall sword shaped leaves. The flowers are highly fragrant and the foliage attractive. But It will be summer before the plant has buds, then fragrant blooms.

I need to keep the hostas, for sure.

They were planted for me by my son and daughter on a hot summer day. They hold memories I want to keep.

The purple irises, not yet bloomed, are thriving too, it seems.

I'll keep those too.

I guess we need to keep some plants, and promises.

My thanks to nine year old Holden Hartsfield for his nice comments about me.

He thinks I'm famous. He said he and his grandmother like to read the newspaper.

Holden is a third grade student at Baldwin Elementary School in Paragould and his grandmother lives in Piggott.

Thank you, Holden.

I hope someday you'll be famous.