Happy Holiday

This post has absolutely nothing to do with the garden, but everything to do with where my heart is today~

Happy holiday to the one I love

who all too soon has gone before

Today we celebrate apart

but you're within my heart forevermore

Happy holiday to the one I love

I keep you in my thoughts

So glad your suffering is now past

though your presence I recall.

Happy holiday my very dear one

I know that yours is bright

I pray that God will shine on me

and help me make mine right

Happy holiday to you always

as these days that pass us by

are fleeting, rare, and precious

I will see you again in time

Happy holiday to you and I

now and forevermore

and until the day that I

come to knock on heaven's door -

I will hold your memory tight

and with everything, all my might

I will celebrate your life

my joy, my love, my light

by,

Lisa Lipka, to honor the memory

of those we live without but think of always

The Day it Rained Bees

I know it's been forever since I've been here! It's been a tumultuous year in which writing was no longer a priority, but perhaps now the time for writing has found its place again. Besides, today could not go undocumented. This particular blog is the ending of an ongoing story of my backyard bees. The picture above, if you can tell, was a very large beehive that had come to grow and thrive in my backyard oak tree. They were always friendly bees and pollinated my garden well. However, unfortunately for them, that branch their hive is hanging on decided to die off - probably suffocated from all that beeswax, if that's possible! So I found myself in a dilemma, the proverbial rock and a hard place - get rid of the bees or risk them crashing to the ground unexpectedly and possibly causing harm to someone. So, of course, the risk to human life overtakes the annihilation of the bees. I was hoping I could find someone to remove and relocate them. However, due to the bees being 40+ feet up in the tree and in the backyard where there is no access for a truck lift, they had to be exterminated. Plus, I was informed by the Hillsborough County Extension Service that beekeeper groups are not even allowed to remove wild bees by state regulation due to possibility of them being or becoming Africanized colonies. Evidently all wild bees in our state are considered Africanized whether they really are or not. That seems like bee profiling to me...

So the bee men came. They were very brave with their fireman ladder, at one point one of them 30+ feet in the air on a ladder in regular pants and a tee shirt, removal pole in one hand, and answering a cell phone in the other hand. A few short bursts of whatever deadly chemical they were using and bees began flying and dropping out of the sky. I was sitting on the screened-in porch so I could see what was going on as the bees were landing mid-flight on the metal roof with little tiny thuds. It sounded like the beginning of a heavy rain storm when you hear those first few big drops of rain before the deluge. I'm sad they were exterminated, but I tried all I could to find an alternative ending for them and it just didn't work out.

So myself and immediate neighbors are, for the moment, safe from possible harm of a beehive crash and from the one-day-might-become-Africanized bees. However, safety is a relative thing, as most of us realize. We are only safe in knowing that we can handle by God's grace whatever comes our way, nothing more and nothing less. We pray for safety and security, and sometimes God provides this in a way that we expect, but at other times all we can receive is His peace in the midst of the storm. The "why" is mostly irrelevant and the rest is what we circumvent.

That beehive is forever changed, gone. They bees don't know why because they can't see the bigger picture. We see the bigger picture and so we understand. It's much the same with God and us. God always sees the bigger picture and works some good, even in the face of tragedy and loss.

So today I can rejoice in knowing that God loves me an abundance more than I loved the bees. Should my home crumble around me and all that I know be lost, I know that He holds me in His hands, that I am blessed regardless of circumstances, and that my soul lives infinitely in Him.

Life and Death

Hi again to all my readers, old and new (no reference to age being made here I promise). You might be wondering why I'm posting such an ugly picture. It may be ugly but it's the truth. This is what my flower bed looks like after the rather frigid Florida winter. These brown and crunchy bushes used to be beautiful pink and white pentas!

It's been a long time since I lived somewhere where everything died in the winter, so the nightly freezes have been a little bit of a shock for my unsuspecting tropical yard. However, this gives me the perfect opportunity to experience the true rebirth of spring, right? This prime sun spot will be turned into a new tomato garden, which I've wanted to do for the last two years but just didn't have the heart to pull out the pentas.

So I am thinking about life and death - the death of the pentas and the new tomato life that will follow, how there wouldn't be something new coming without the death of the old, how I tend to hang onto the familiar instead of being adventurous with the new. Perhaps though, it's possible to achieve a nice balance of remembering the past with gladness and welcoming the new with a warm embrace. I find that with the garden I am able to do this. I remember those beautiful pentas and how they cheered me when I sat on the porch, but I'm also really excited about having my future tomatoes in this wonderfully perfect spot.

So, I give thanks to God that the garden has already begun to teach me life lessons this early in the season. I'm always amazed at how our Creator reveals His truth in the nature all around us. I look forward expectantly to this years' Journey Through the Garden.