The frost will be visiting soon, and the flowers are retiring. It is time to cut and pull our friends. They have helped us through the summer with beautiful blooms that reminded us to keep looking up.

Do you remember those beautiful yards of yesterday? We never called them lawns, and landscaping was not professional, but by pure imagination. Flowers were everywhere, and in no particular order. A flower was planted because this was a “good spot” to put it. A flowerpot was any kind of available container; an old bucket, even an old shoe worked well. These yards were a little bit of heaven where many of us played and grew up. I think it is because they were planted by people who still looked for the beautiful, and believed if you seek it, you will find it.

The first thing God did with His creation was to plant a garden. The first work He gave people was to tend that garden. One of the last things that Jesus said before He died on the cross was to a dying thief: “Today you shall be with Me in paradise” (A walled garden in a King’s palace.)

It is time to say farewell to our summer friends. “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.” Longfellow was perfect in his words when he wrote, “Stars of earth, these golden flowers; emblems of our resurrection; emblems of the bright and better land.”

“I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses…and He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own; and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”