Tag Archives: Flowers

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: True Belief

O Lord, Your daffodils insist on showing up every February. Don’t they know basketball tourney time lurks in the near future, with its usual accompanying blizzard? Yet nothing keeps them down. OMG, help me believe in the Resurrection as much as they do.

 

Home Ownership: The American Dream?

For Hubby, me and our newborn daughter, our rental house proved a sanctuary.

Apartments worked for Hubby and me — until a percussion major moved upstairs. Then, upon expecting our first child, we learned our complex was a drug trafficking center.

We rented a house.

The only upstairs residents were squirrels. They pattered across the roof, but none sold drugs or played xylophones.

We possessed three whole bedrooms and a garage. No more scraping ice off car windows. Hubby and I began to succumb to the American Dream. …

However, the driveway didn’t shovel itself. Our house boasted a real yard — whose grass never stopped growing. Flowers I planted attracted real weeds. We purchased a shovel, mower and garden tools. Lawn chairs. And …

The infinite to-buy list should have warned us about home ownership.

But tired of paying rent, I longed to choose the colors of walls and carpet. Bang nails to hang pictures without asking permission.

Our younger daughter welcomed her new brother to the little ranch we built. Thank goodness the water and sewer system had been connected!

So, we built a little ranch in a new addition … where roads hadn’t been completed. Also, water and sewage hadn’t yet been connected to the town’s system. During that inflationary era, the special 12 percent mortgage seemed cheap, compared to an earlier 21.5 percent prime rate.

We brought two newborns to that ranch. Mysterious stains marred my carefully chosen colors. I spent years watering grass and breastfeeding babies. Neither was ever satisfied. I also discovered I wasn’t handy. If I banged a nail into one wall, a gaping hole appeared in the opposite one.

The American Dream?

Our home for 24 years.
Before we knew it, the toddler had a prom date.

One other house we owned ate water heaters and softeners. Another featured a pillow-soft porch roof, as well as a toilet that randomly ran over and soaked anyone playing Ping-Pong in the basement.

We occasionally considered living in a grass hut in Bongo Bongo.

Still, Hubby and I have called all three houses “home.”

Home, where our babies took first, shaky steps. Where they learned to watch for traffic as they walked to school. Home, where we took prom and graduation pictures. Home, where they and their children now come for holidays.

Home is the only place where Hubby and I can put feet on the furniture. Where we can blow up and make up. Bake brownies, eating them all without anyone judging.

Image by Hans from Pixabay.

Our American Dream is no HGTV superstar, but at this address, we can be us.

At home.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What home-owning adventures have you experienced?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: Deer Aren’t So Dear

Jesus, thank You for the beauty and grace of the deer You created. I’m thankful You preserved them on Noah’s Ark. But OMG, did those lovely Bambis and Falines wreak havoc there the way they do in my yard?  

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: Pests or Pleasures?

O Lord, You know I didn’t plant these cosmos invading my arbor; having lived there last year, they simply assumed a welcome.

Ditto for these zinnias that interrupt my marigold border.

I’ve never planted petunias this color, yet they mooch off my orange impatiens.

OMG, are You teaching me Your interruptions and invasions of my plans can be lovely? 

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: One Thumb’s Green, the Other Brown.

O Lord, I am such a fan of the flowers You make! But OMG, why, though I water, fuss, and pamper, do they sometimes act as if I’m doing my best to kill them?

Darling.
Diva.

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: Wow, God. Just Wow.

O Lord, Your infinite mind has designed an infinite number of beautiful things, but surely, peonies must near the top of your lovely list. OMG, thank You that while our politicians don’t always get it right, they were smart enough to name it Indiana’s state flower! 

Not Tiptoeing through the Tulips

Image by Melanie from Pixabay.

Whether wide open, singing to a glorious, sunny sky or pursing lip-petals in a demure pout, tulips are delightful harbingers of spring.

Only in others’ yards.

My tulips, the teenagers of the flower world, refuse to get out of bed. I sacrificed knees and back to lavish exotic foods on them. Yet, they only lift a limp leaf or two.

Image by Dominique from Pixabay.

Bloom? Too much trouble. Besides, why should they be bound by my expectations?

Each spring, I waited again. Again.

“Hey,” I yelled, “you’re supposed to be perennials!”

I stumbled over a “Do Not Disturb” sign erected by the tulip that had drawn the short straw.

One greenhouse declared tulips will faithfully bloom every spring … if I relocate to the Turkish Himalayas foothills. The fussy lovelies crave their native habitat’s hot, dry summers and extreme winters. Dutch growers have devoted 400 years to discovering ways to imitate these conditions. They have learned, as Mary Beth Breckenridge in the Chicago Tribune once suggested, to “think like a bulb.”

Image by Matthias Böckel from Pixabay.

With all due respect to the Netherlands, I’d rather retain IQ points, thank you very much.

Only once have my tulips bloomed more than one season. Even then, contrary red ones, planted to border pink tulips, bloomed two weeks early. They formed a lovely circle … around dirt.

At least, the tardy pink tulips created a clump of color. For two days. Then, strong winds blew them flat.

Image by Carina Hofmeister from Pixabay.

Still, hopelessly in love with gardeners’ photos, I again fertilized and hoed. On my knees, I planted more bulbs.

The next morning, I peered outside at my perfect flower bed … only to meet squirrels’ chittery scorn. My efforts had supplied a Golden Corral buffet for little thieves.

Something inside me snapped. I dashed outside, yelling and swinging a hoe like a Mr. McGregor samurai. “Hi-yah!

The squirrels escaped unhurt, laughing.

Rush hour drivers zooming past also enjoyed the show.

Why did they laugh? Just because I still wore my nightgown …

Once, though, I outwitted the squirrels, planting bulbs in a different bed. The following spring, these bloomed in glorious display.

For two days. Then deer devoured every last one.

Will I ever tiptoe through my own tulips?

Sure.

When I talk Hubby into moving to the Himalayas.

Image by Ralph from Pixabay.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Do your tulips bloom every year?

Chocolate Chat

“Nine out of ten people like chocolate. The tenth person always lies.” —Unknown

Image by Larisa Koshkina from Pixabay.

In case you didn’t collide with card, candy, and teddy bear displays, I’ll inform you: Valentine’s Day was Monday. Think in terms of a major apology gift. Half-price chocolates save money, but will they impress your lady?

Perhaps I can suggest tips for future reference.

At all costs, avoid the “I-love-you-every-day-why-should-I-give-you-a-gift-now?” defense. Like the adage, “It doesn’t matter who wins or loses,” it contains elements of truth. But you’ll lose, big time. Unless you think sleeping on the couch — or driveway — is fun.

The book my husband gave me for our first Valentine’s Day looked much better 47 years ago.

Fortunately, my husband figured this out. He’s come a long way since our first Valentine’s Day, when he gave me a history book. No, I’m not making that up.

After 47 years, though, he’s a master gift giver. Hubby should offer lessons on finding cards that make a wife’s heart sing. However, he faced a common February quandary: I adore chocolate, but I’m dieting. Should he give me only a card?

Some men bypass the obvious solution: flowers. Instead, they buy their ladies lingerie.

Image by Vidmir Raic from Pixabay.

Seriously? When women are hating mirrors, are suffering from starvation, and are pushed around by skinny exercise gurus wearing Spandex?

Admittedly, it’s a cruel dilemma — only one of thousands women inflict on men.

Guys should blame marketing geniuses of the late 1800s and early 1900s who married chocolate and Valentine’s Day.

During the 1860s, beverage manufacturer Richard Cadbury discovered the answer to his own dilemma: how to use cocoa butter that remained after processing chocolate drinks. Before his descendants manufactured the eggs associated with his name, Cadbury marketed valentine candies in beautiful boxes he designed himself.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay.

Milton Hershey reinforced the Valentine’s Day-chocolate connection when he began selling tear-dropped chocolate “kisses” named for smoochy sounds chocolate made during processing.

For a time, chocolate equaled milk chocolate. When I, a second grader, received my first Valentine’s Day chocolates from towheaded Paul Henry, I didn’t nitpick about milk chocolate, dark chocolate, bittersweet, or semisweet. Unlike modern connoisseurs, I didn’t debate whether white or ruby chocolate are true chocolate.

Question free candy? Stupid.

Speaking of stupidity, some gourmets have “diversified” chocolate. They’ve invented a chocolate éclair hot dog. Chocolate and black pepper goat cheese truffles. Even chocolate calamari soup.

I told my love, “While I crave both seafood and chocolate, please don’t get creative on me this Valentine’s Day, okay?”

Image by Allan Lau from Pixabay.

“Since when have I been creative?”

True.

“By the way,” Hubby continued, “why should I give you chocolates, when you’ve only given me cards?”

Touché.

However, he, too, has been avoiding seconds at dinner. Toughening up with weights.

Should I give him the ultimate symbol of my love and concern for his health: broccoli dipped in dark chocolate?

Maybe just a card. …

Tune in February 14, 2023, to see if these old lovers learned anything during their chocolate chat.

Image by Gabriel Alva from Pixabay.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What does Valentine’s Day look like at your house?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: True Flower Power

O Lord, nothing looked deader than the brown, shriveled seeds I planted last spring. But You breathed Your life into them, and now, a hundred colorful reminders of Your Resurrection dance for joy in the west wind. OMG, to think that You can do the same for us, if we let You. Alleluia!

Summer Questions

On sultry summer days, do you sit on the porch — more likely, bask in air-conditioning — and ponder profound issues?

Me, too.

Skeptics might claim we’re procrastinating. We don’t want to mow or weed the garden for the 500th time. Or battle Japanese beetles that may as well own deeds to our rose beds.

No, I truly look for answers to my questions, including:

  • Unlike highway medians, why can’t our yards and gardens be declared prairie preservation areas?
  • Why would anyone invent platform flip-flops? A friend asks this question daily, as falling off her fashionable footwear put her in a walking boot.
  • My question: why would anyone buy them?
  • When temperatures sizzle, are you tempted to splat and zoom on a Slip ’N Slide®? (Me, neither.)
  • Do others feel embarrassed — and relieved — that their campers include air conditioners?
  • Why do summer mornings smell better every year?
  • Why do beach lovers strip down to strings — some wore pandemic masks bigger than their bathing suits — yet other bathers don more clothing than in January?
  • Why would anybody believe romaine should be grilled?
  • What summer food sometimes outranks (gasp!) ice cream? Though a lifetime addict, I believe on the hottest days, a chilled watermelon slice tastes even better. Besides, I can spit seeds at my spouse.
  • Why does my three-year-old grandson’s face, smeared with blueberries, appear adorable when my own toddlers’ gooey, blue kisses sent me running for my life — and a washcloth?
  • Tarry blacktop conjures teeth-gritting images of road construction. Endless balky traffic. Detours to Timbuktu. But does its fragrance generate positive memories for anyone else? Sweaty bike rides on country roads to a mom-and-pop store to buy icy, 10-cent bottles of cream soda? Or yakety cycling with teen friends to a bookmobile?
  • People are named June and August, but who’s named July?
  • Why do some summer outdoor wedding guests look ready for a Hollywood photo shoot, whereas other perspiring attendees — not me, you understand — look like they spent the afternoon in a dunk tank?
  • Which is best: lightning bugs, glowworms, or fireflies?
  • Why does the ice maker malfunction only when temperatures rise above 90?
  • Ditto for air conditioners. And freezers.
  • Which songs are hummed most during summer: Beach Boys’ hits? The ’50s classic, “A Summer Place”? Or “Summer Nights” from the musical, Grease?
  • While riding in the back of a pickup at 65 mph doesn’t carry its former appeal, do we children of yesteryear miss those wild, warm, nighttime breezes, the lavish, starry show above?
  • Thankfully, we don’t miss out on summer evening scents. Don’t they smell better every year?

Especially when neighbors mow grass. And nurture beautiful flowers.

All while I ponder these profound questions of summer.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What weighty quandaries fill your mind during summer?