It comes from generations back in more than one direction - this flowers in the blood thing. My grandmother used to stop and pick flowers on the side of the road. She always said that they were there for the taking as the roadside didn't belong to anyone.
My mother loves flowers, too. We always had beautiful gardens around our home. Sometimes we lived in very simple houses but there were still flowers. Later we lived in larger homes with landscapes created by my mother as a frame for our home.
When my husband and I married, the reception was in the gardens of our home. Since we were engaged for three years, mother had actually planned and planted flowers exactly the colors of the wedding attendants' dresses - a bright fuchsia pink with other colors as accents.
My parents now live on top of a mountain in North Carolina. Once again Mother has planned and planted lovely gardens all around. The other night she thought she saw some blooming bushes at the edge of the yard - actually a little way down the mountainside. She decided to walk (at dusk) down to pick some. I don't know if she picked any flowers or not. She fell in her progress down the mountain on very rough ground and broke her wrist. Being the plunky 87-year-old she is, she had to wait for my dad to look for her and come to help her up but she still went to church the next morning as usual. At that point she didn't even know her wrist was broken.
I guess she might say it wasn't worth the fall for the flowers given that she'll spend the next six weeks in a cast and sling and it's her right arm. But with flowers in her blood she just might not say so. It is flowers in the blood that feed the heart with beauty.
I had to grow up and have my own yard to learn that. I never found "yard work" particularly enjoyable growing up. But now I know the joy that flowers in the blood can bring. We have a rather steep bank in front of our home that drops about 70 feet to the highway below. Little by little we have tamed some of that bank and planted things that bloom there. I love the growth that our rather short Pittsburgh growing season brings to ferns and flowers. I guess it's the flowers in my blood, too.
It wasn't by accident that God placed his first creation in a beautiful garden. God created us to have flowers in our blood - to enjoy the beauty of His creation. Sin came and wrecked God's plan for a time but the day is coming when God promises to make all things new - to restore His creation to all He intended it to be in the beginning. That restoration will be a beautiful thing!
In the meantime, we work among the thorns and thistles to bring beauty of even an imperfect sort while we wait for God's coming restoration. I spent part of today "reclaiming" my yard from the thorns and thistles that had sprung up during the last several weeks. There is still more to be done, but the flowers in my blood will call me to stay on task.
1 comment:
Mama agrees that the lovely hydrangeas she picked at dusk were not big and luscious enough to be worth the fall, however, she is enjoying them in the house.
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