When the Unseen Becomes Visible

Once upon a time, when I did cross-stitch, I made 2 bell pulls––one for my mom and one for my mother-in-law. They both grew gardens of vegetables, plants, and flowers. They both had the proverbial green thumb. They both loved roses, my mother insisting that roses are not hard to grow. Right.

The saying I stitched: “Who plants a seed beneath the sod and waits to see believes in God.”

If people didn’t know that tiny seeds yield big plants, it would seem ridiculous to hope, much less conceive of the cycle of seeds to plants, all the phases of growth, and how something that looks dead yields life.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. . . . And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Hebrews 11:1, 6

It does take faith to believe that good can come from something that appears to have no life or purpose.

In the movie GIANT, the character Judge Oliver Whiteside says, “It’s a bad wind that doesn’t blow somebody some good.”

Where I live, the wind blows and blows and blows. Some days, the weather conditions read, “Dirt.” Or as my grandson calls those brown days, a “dirt-nado.” Hard to see. Hard to breathe.

Yet I remind myself that if it were not for days like that, everyone in the world would want to live here. Some days, like today, driving in traffic felt as if people are settling in Texas like they did in the land rush days in Oklahoma.

Following the Texas deep-freeze in February that included major power outages across the state, the extended cold apparently did the spring roses some good. A gardener friend told me her roses are spectacular this year.

My dog Kona and I have walked our neighborhood and I have been dumbstruck by the blooming roses.

And since Kona and I have had a particularly hectic week, it occurred to me to share some of the roses before the wind takes the petals far, far away.

 “The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change: Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.” 

– Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist

New rose planted for my own Rose’s special birthday

Though not a gardener if I can help it, I planted this rose bush in a large pot where previously a tiny pink-bud rose bush had lived for years. That bush did not survive the freeze, or else my late pruning did the damage.

Planted on May 1, this gorgeous bush has already had a second round of blooms. I stand amazed.

The “Julia Child” rose, known in the UK as the Absolutely Fabulous rose, is a golden butter or golden floribunda rose, named after the chef Julia Child.

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A beautiful sight in the neighborhood slideshow:

Photography means “painting with light.” Light is the secret to photography. (See previous blogpost for photo tips.)

I took all these pictures with the camera on my iPhone. STOC (straight out of the camera, except for the rose tree where I experimented with a filter in Photoshop).

The Wind, the Cold, and the Roses

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” 

– Abraham Lincoln

We can complain about the weather, the bad wind or the need for rain, but somewhere some good shows up, and sometimes we are fortunate enough to notice.