And doesn’t God do beautiful work?
Spring
Celebration
Big White Flakes of Spring
It really is spring! You can see it in the air! It’s in all those big white things that are swirling madly through the air and sticking to all the trees, the yards, and the cars.
My Southern Illinois (USA) neighborhood yesterday, March 25, 2013.
Just Do It
These delightful daffodils — golden bells of sunshine — exploded in my back yard a day ago. They always come — regardless of what the weather man says. A friend told me today that she heard a winter-weather advisory for this area, and I responded that almost every year, as soon as my daffodils come up, then the weather turns mean and nasty and tries to beat them to the ground. But these daffodils represent life, and life keeps producing life — even in the very face of death.
I got to thinking, after talking to my friend, that these daffodils, like everything else God created, have a job to do. They are to push their way up out of the ground and grow straight and tall to announce that spring has come and new life is available. They do their job perfectly, regardless of any possible consequences.
So I’m taking a lesson from these little flowers, and I’m sharing that lesson with you: Don’t worry about whether anything or anyone else is doing what he’s supposed to do. And don’t look all around to see if all circumstances are in your favor. Just be faithful over what you have been assigned. If you have a job to do —- DO IT!
~
Macro-Monday
My pink and white azaleas up close and personal
To join in the Macro-Monday Challenge visit this site: http://lisaschaos.com/
Macro Monday — My Buddy, Big Blue
I’ve never taken part in “Macro Monday” previously. In fact, I just found out about it a couple weeks ago. But I just can’t resist participating with a couple close-ups of my beautiful Blue Spruce Tree. I do love this tree and have raised it from the time it was about 5 feet tall. It had been stuck in an old wooden barrel beneath a large tree and was struggling to lean over sideways to get sunshine. I rescued it and gave it a home in my front yard. With a good strong metal pole to support it for the next couple of years, it straightened itself out and reached for the sun in a perfectly vertical direction. It now proudly stands somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 feet tall and 45 feet around.
Every spring I am thrilled anew at the process of brand new life that bursts forth from every branch of this beautiful masterpiece of God’s creation.This past spring, I photographed every step of it’s new growth — from first bud stage to full plumage — and created a slide show with those photos. I’ll share a couple of those shots here for Macro Monday.
Thanks to Lisa Chaos for offering this photo challenge. You can find out the details and take part as well by visiting her site: http://lisaschaos.com/
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge — One Single Flower
This photo is my sister’s.
It is of the very first Crocus in her yard last spring.
I think it’s lovely.
To join in the challenge, hop over to Cee’s site at this link: http://ceeslifephotographyblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/cees-fun-foto-challenge-one-single-flower/
A Tree Grows In Herrin, Illinois
I have a Blue Spruce tree. And I love my Blue Spruce tree very much. Though I am a far cry from the type of person you’d call a “nature worshiper,” I have to admit that I have this deep connection to my tree. For one thing, I have always thought the Blue Spruce was one of the most beautiful trees on the planet, and I used to think that it was unlikely I would ever have one in my own yard. But about 12 years ago, shortly after my husband and I moved into my current home, a cousin asked me if I’d like to have a Blue Spruce.
It seems that this little tree – not much more than a baby, at 5 feet tall – was having a very hard time of it in his yard because it was sitting in an old barrel, beneath several other trees, which were robbing it of sun and seriously stunting its growth. It was leaning to one side, trying to stay alive, but my cousin said it wouldn’t last if he didn’t get it out of the barrel and give it a home in deep soil, with plenty of sunshine and moisture.
I jumped at the chance to have my own Blue Spruce, and I believed that, through care and a lot of prayer (I always pray for my pets and my plants), I could get it back to a state of good health. I was especially encouraged to learn that when he went to pick up the barrel and transfer it to my yard, he could not get the barrel to budge. Upon further investigation, he found that this persistent Blue Spruce had forced its roots down between some very small cracks in the bottom of the barrel and rooted itself in the solid ground, determined to live and grow.
So we planted it in the middle of my front yard, drove a metal stake into the yard against its trunk, and fastened it to that stake so that it would help it to grow straight again. It was barely 5 feet tall, and two people could reach around its circumference and touch hands. 12 years and much prayer later (due to drought, bagworms, and a couple big dogs who kept mistaking it for their bathroom), it is thriving. Standing straight and strong, it now reaches almost 20 feet into the air and would require about 7 people to encircle it if they wanted to touch hands. I used to decorate it every year at Christmas, but now it would take a truck with a bucket ladder to do the job.
I guess you could say that I have a love affair with this tree. And every spring, I get excited just thinking about how it will again put out thousands of little pods on the end of each branch and push from those pods the most delightful bright green fluffs which will become the new leaves for that year. I look forward to the experience every year, and each year I am thrilled all over again as I watch the brand new life spring forth and totally renew this giant friend. Part of that thrill, of course, is not just because my tree is growing. But that bursting forth of new life from my tree represents all the new life that God gives us each year in nature – and the new life He offers each of us through Jesus Christ and His resurrection.
This year, I got the bright idea that I would take pictures and record each step in the process of this renewal of life in my Spruce tree. And since WordPress so conveniently offers a slide show apparatus on our blogs, I have put those pictures into a slide show in order to share the beauty and the thrill with everyone who visits here. Enjoy.
Slideshow
Tribute To An “Ordinary” Poet
My mother was a beautiful woman, inside and out. She was kind, generous, gracious, and 
hospitable to everyone she come into contact with. She loved people, and she saw “specialness” in very ordinary people and very ordinary events in life. Then she celebrated that “specialness” in poetry.
Yes, my mother was a poet. I don’t imagine anyone would call her work “world-shaking,” but it was a collection of words and emotions that gently lifted up the people and events in her “ordinary” life — and lifted up the God who had given all of them to her.
As I look at the clock on my computer screen, I see that we have just crossed into the “second day of spring,” and every spring I am reminded especially of two of my mother’s poems. They are probably my favorites of all of her work. Her book, Life Is Worth Living, includes poems on many subjects, and she even wrote a poem to me specifically at one point in her life. Each of those poems has its own unique place for its own unique reasons. But, somehow, for me, these two poems best represent my mother’s gifts for seeing “specialness” in small, everyday things. I’d like to share them with you.
NEW LIFE
Why the Crocus – a pretty little thing –
Should burst forth, the first sign of spring?
Though buried and dormant in snow and cold,
Will bear new blossoms, so bright and bold.
Of all the plants, like flowers and trees,
The Crocus is the first, the smallest of these;
A rainbow of colors, like one in the sky,
Yet so close to the earth. I wonder why
He chose the Crocus, so very, very small,
To show the world there is new life for all.
WISH I WERE A BUMBLEBEE
Now I’m safe high up in this tree.
Or could he be fooling me?
Gone away far too soon;
Hardly ever leaves ’till noon.
Oh, to bark or snarl or chase
Would take that grin off of his face.
Or if I were a bumblebee,
Bet that cat would be afraid of me!
One little wren don’t have a chance
When that arched back starts to prance.
But I will figure out how, some day,
To make him prance the other way.
Oh, for two horns – like a bull;
I’d show him just who had some pull.
Or if I were a bumblebee,
Bet that cat would be afraid of me!
Just like a snake in the grass,
Lie and wait for him to pass.
Or to buzz around his ears
Would show up some of his cat fears.
Oh, to sting him on the nose
Sure would keep him on his toes.
Yes, if I were a bumble bee,
That darn cat would be afraid of me!
Oh, to sting him on the nose
Sure would keep him on his toes.
Yes, if I were a bumblebee,
That darn cat would be afraid of me!
Poems: © 1979 Vera Faye Pavloff
Crocus Photo: © 2011 Brenda Calvert
Bird Photo: © 2011 Beautiful Free Pictures
The Happy Wordcrafter 
