Happy Birthday, Landon! We love you!!!!

Spring Celebration

Spring Cleaning . . . going through closets, straightening drawers and working in the yard! It's a chore I'm looking forward to this year. I'm even planning for it, anticipating it. Come on spring, I'm ready for ya!

In fact, I got a little jump on it this weekend and found this image as I was sorting through old computer discs. The drought, coupled with my neglect, has taken it's toll and this little corner doesn't look quite so serene now. But I know with a little water and attention (okay, maybe a lot of water and attention) that once welcoming look can be restored.

Through the years, most of our time was spent working and raising a family. Our yard did good just to get mowed most of the time and getting a sprinkler turned on it was a treat. Then a couple of years ago, with one child married and in a home of his own and the other half way around the world on a mission trip, I decided it was time to start a yard! Boy, I was off like a cannon shot (okay, maybe more of a BB gun). Landon had replaced his old paint-peeled mail box so I rescued it from the trash and mounted it on an old cedar post in the back yard and planted flowers in it. Then I gathered up a few old milk cans to scatter about, talked my mom out of the furrow plow in the photo, put up some old weathered wooden fence panels for accents, hung an old window frame on the fence for jasmine to vine around . . . oh, I was on a roll. In fact, Landon told his dad not to stand still too long or I'd have him in the back as yard art!

Now with spring just around the corner, I'm itching to get at it again. I'm really glad God created the different seasons. I look forward to each one in it's time but I especially get excited about spring! It's like all of nature wakes up to celebrate the gift of life.

If I'm not careful, I easily get caught up in droughts of my own making, ending up feeling like my yard looks right now. Neglect also plays a part, except rather than the gardner neglecting the garden, the garden neglects the Gardener. It's not what I intended for my yard nor is it what God intends for me.

But then it happens. One morning you look out and notice the buds on the trees. There it is again, the whisper that winter has past and spring is coming, bringing with it new growth and fragrance and song. Yes, then it happens. You wake up one morning and realize that whisper you've been hearing is God saying, "Come with me. If you'll just look outside yourself you'll see the promise of spring and new growth and fragrance and song."

Oh, I love spring! Nature's celebration of life!

"He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. " Psalm 1:3