Sunday, August 15, 2010

This is my face a couple of days ago; the bruising under the left eye is gone and now just a small amount under the right eye, mostly hidden by my glasses.  The bump is considerably smaller and a nice shade of yucky green.  Perhaps in another week it will be completely gone.

In the meantime, I have developed a summer cold and am coughing more than usual; very annoying.  I hate colds.  

This is a photo of one of my iris beds taken on April 30th this year.  There were about 30 plants ready to bloom a week before I left for the states.  Missed all the pretty blooms. 

 This next one is what the same flower bed looks like now.  Something happened while we were gone that literally rotted all the iris plants.  This is true in several other places around the yard.  We were told that June and July were particularly wet which may explain the rotted chormes.  I am so sad to see these all gone; it took at least seven years to get the flowers to this stage.  However, there are some still around the yard in other places, so when the weather cools some, I will dig up everything and start over, putting some fertilizer and lime in the soil and other nutrients. 

Our pastor said recently that It Takes Time to Plant a Garden, speaking of building a church.  The real flowers take time also, some bloom for years, some wither and fade away, some don't grow big at all, while others are beautiful and have big blooms year after year.  The same can be said about the local church in many ways.    

While this flower bed looks more like a forgotten desert, it can, once again, produce beautiful blooms as before, but it will take some work, much like planting a church does.