The God Who Sees

It is Good Friday, the day that God, in His humanness, as Jesus, died on a cross. A horrible punishment for criminals. He was innocent. This was His plan from the beginning, to die for us, taking all of our sin upon Himself so that we'd be free. When we believe in Him and accept His free gift of salvation, repent of our sins, He remembers them no more and we will have life, real life, forever with Him. This life starts now and continues on into eternity.

He did not stay dead, He conquered death and came to life again on the third day, that is what we as Christians celebrate at Easter time.

This morning my sis-in-law told me about a beautiful you-tube video that I will share here.  It is called 'The God Who Sees'. It is beautiful! It is encouraging!

Lines that spoke to me personally were the following:

God says, I will be the rock of your salvation,

I will hold you up by the strength of my right hand,

and the power of my Spirit will free you from all fear.

In the hour of your deepest need, 

You'll find that I am near, I AM here.

I am the ring of fire around you.

I am a sinner saved by God's grace. I am forever thankful for what He has done for me through His death and resurrection. Every day is an opportunity to grow closer to Him.

In Matthew 7:7-8 we read in the Bible,

Ask, and it shall be given you;
seek, and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

For every one that asketh receiveth;
and he that seeketh findeth;
and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

In  John 11:25a, we read Jesus' words.

He said: I am the resurrection and the life. 

He who believes in Me, 

though he may die, he shall live.

We are loved deeply by our God/Creator/Messiah/Jesus. For those who believe in Him Easter is a joyous celebration. If there are any reading this post and you do not know Jesus personally, I pray that you will seek Him, trust Him to show you His way for your life. Once you believe, He has promised to never leave or forsake you. He is ever by our side. In every circumstance He is with us.

 May you all have lovely Easter celebrations with family and loved ones.

FlowerLady

Next garden project & volunteers

Hello Folks ~ First of all, I pray that all of you in the path of this late winter mega-storm will be safe. 

Thank you all again for your kind comments in the last blog post. 

It's hard to believe the middle of April is almost here. Time goes so fast these days. My days are busy and that's a good thing really. Like I said in a recent post, I'm working on getting gardens under control before summer's heat and humidity get here.

This morning I went out with the overgrown caravan patio area in mind. The stand of palms really needed to be trimmed, flower pots and recliner needed to be taken care of, weeds needed to be pulled.

After a couple hours of work.

Patio on the left, still needs tweeking, on the right in a view into the secret garden.

Yesterday morning I thought about going to Home Depot for some potting soil, but decided against it since it was also Sr. citizen day at thrift stores and I knew if I went out I'd want to spend $. So, I stayed home, folded and put away two loads of clean laundry, changed sheets on the bed, then went out to hand water potted plants and little garden spaces.  

I was feeling a tad 'down'. I felt like getting out of the house, but buying plants can be an addiction, especially at spring time, and honestly I can't really be doing that any ol' time I feel the urge. While outside with hose in hand, I noticed a couple of 'gifts'. On an old passion flower vine that I thought was completely dead, no blooms in a least a year, I saw new leaves. That is so exciting to me as this passion vine's flowers are one of the most beautiful blooms and the scent from them is heavenly. The vine is called 'Incense'. When it blooms, I'll be sure to share them with you. I would right now, but my desk top computer is awaiting a new fan. I'm in my laptop.

Then as I walked around, I noticed that the coral honeysuckle vine had a piece of it that had touched down into a flower pot and rooted. Yay!  I'd like to get this going along the front hedgerow.  Hummingbirds and butterflies love this.

Today as I was working by the caravan patio, I spied two shrimp plant volunteers. WOW! I am being blessed with free plants. :-)

I've lots more flowers to share, but this post is long enough and my stomach is starting to let me know it's supper time.

I am so thankful to God for His gifts of love to me. They let me know He cares about every little detail of our lives.

Happy Spring from Plum Cottage ~ FlowerLady

Seasons of Life

Greetings from Plum Cottage in s.e. FL. Here it is the start of another weekend and time keeps zipping right along. These past two months have been seasons of change, not only in the weather patterns, but also in the times of life.

At the beginning of February my favorite aunt, my dear husband's aunt, had a stroke at home, and fell and broke her hip. She was taken to the hospital and they did surgery. She would be 92 this year.  She was then put in rehab. She had another stroke and went to be with God her Father, on the 18th of March.  She is survived by her only child, our cousin Faye. Before my Aunt passed from this life to the next,  Faye's husband suffered the exact same kind of stroke her Mom had had. He passed away a week to the day from when her Mom left. This has been really, really rough for Faye so I am asking prayer in her behalf that she will have the strength to get through each and every day. I ask prayers for myself as well that I will be comforting support since I've already been where she is in being a widow.

I've been re-reading 3 different books in my personal library for widows as it's been 6 yrs and 4 months since the start of my widowhood journey and I wanted to refresh myself with dealing with grief from the beginning. While doing this reading, I realized that I've come quite away since those first few weeks/months. God has been my strength. I prayed, read the Bible, books, devotionals, I cried. Grieving is different for every one. There is no right or wrong way. There is no time limit. To be of help to widows, we need to be compassionate and encouraging. We need to be there for those who need someone to listen to what they say or don't say about their feelings. Be supportive, give help where help is needed. Do not be overly helpful, or pushy. But be there for them when they need someone. Pray for them.

The blogging community, family and friends, church family, have all helped in my growing through my grieving and I thank each and every one of you for your love, prayers and encouragement.

We widows can not only survive but thrive. God has a plan for our good, He hears our hearts cries, He is with us every step of the way.  I am so thankful to Him for what He has done, for what He is doing and for what He will do.

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Part of my surviving/thriving mode, (even though I've had some slumps), has been working in my gardens. Gardening in s.e. FL is a year round project, so it is never done, and my tropical, cottage gardens can and do turn into a jungle quickly. I've been working outside in the mornings trying to get caught up. Summer's heat and humidity will be here all too soon and working outside past mid morning will not be a good thing then.

My dear husband is the one who came up with my online name of 'FlowerLady', because of my love of flowers and because I was out in my gardens among the flowers, when I wasn't working at my job. He always knew where to find me. He once said I was 'the girl with far-away eyes' (line from a Rolling Stones song) when I was out among the flowers.

These days I am working on grouping potted plants into 2-3 main areas making it easier for me to water, etc.

Below is an area that really needed some serious weeding. This is my clothesline/caravan garden area, before and after. It could be better, but it is forward progress and I am happy with that for now.

Now for some blooms.There are so many things in bloom right now, and the air is filled with scents. It is absolutely wonderful. There are at least 3 different jasmine perfuming the air, roses too, a scented geranium, a faux orange bush and more that I can't think of at the moment.

This rose did not have a name tag when I bought it, but the color and the scent made me put it into my cart. I think this was from Home Depot.

If I new the name of this one, I don't remember it, and it has no tag.

This little sweetie is 'Kathleen'. I've had the mother plant for many years now, this one is a cutting that rooted. She has a nice delicate scent, and is one of my favorites.

This is 'International Herald Tribune'

Yesterday I did some errands, one of the places I stopped at was The Dollar Store for some tissue paper. I looked around while there and bought some Easter candy, 2 pkgs of cup cake liners, 8 pkgs of flower seeds 25 cents a pkt. 

 
I moseyed over to the little book section and found a real gem, at least it is to me. I had seen the author of this book in Country Living Magazine many years ago and loved her style. This is a lovely hard back book with lots of wonderful photos and history of 'Magnolia Pearl'. Price ~ $1.

I highly recommend this book for inspiration and eye candy. 

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I think tonight I will fix tacos for supper, my favorite comfort/happy meal.

Count your blessings, take nothing for granted, grow and learn through your circumstances whatever they are.

Kindness matters, so be kind.

Have a wonderful weekend ~ FlowerLady

Wonderful eggs by Vital Farms

Good Thursday afternoon Folks ~ thought I’d share some delicious eggs that I found at my local Publix grocery store. I thought I would like to try some eggs produced by ‘happy chickens’. 

Oh my goodness. First off, the carton caught my eye, and even though the price is steep, $6.29 a dozen, I decided to try them. These aren’t for cooking/baking with, but for eating as an egg. You can check their website out here. 

EDIT: 04-05- These eggs can be used for cooking/baking with, I didn't mean that they couldn't. It's just at this price, and on my limited budget, I prefer to eat them as eggs for breakfast, lunch or supper.

 I was not disappointed, the yolks are this wonderful golden color, and the whites were custardy instead of rubbery.

I have tried a couple other brands since, but to me this one is the best. I looked up local farms and farm raised eggs run about the same price.

For all of you who have chickens and get your own fresh eggs, you are blessed. I’ve been watching homesteading videos and chickens take work, but they are a joy to interact with and they give you food to eat. I will drive to my local Publix and pick up a dozen when I need them. 

That’s it for this post. I had written the company telling them I would do a post on them on my blog, so here it is.

Happy Spring to some and Happy Summer to others.

FlowerLady