Out With the Old

A big party is in the works over here. Our Middle Son is turning 18, and we're hoping the throw

a big party for him. We're in party prep mode, and somehow that includes getting the gardens

looking good, even though only a few visitors will really look at them. I should let the gardens go

in favor of cleaner ceiling fan blades, but I just can't do it. 

So I've been clipping last year's hydrangea blooms, and the wind sends them 

rolling away across the lush, green grass. Teamwork! 

Last year was a huge year for my hydrangea bushes - probably more blooms than I've ever seen

in the nineteen years we've lived here. That means there's A LOT of old blooms to clip.

They still have their own beauty, a sort of faded framework, the bloom's structural skeleton 

minus the color for which they're prized. But these are removed with hardly a backward 

glance in hopes of the very best from the bushes again this season. 

It's a gardening sort of faith, don't you think, that we trim what is left over from the last 

season in anticipation of what we hope might soon emerge. Gardeners don't leave the leftover

stalks, dried blooms or seed pods for the enjoyment of the current growing season. 

We trim off the old in anticipation of the new. 

*****

Lord, let me not settle for last season's blooms in my life. Help me keep my eye moving forward in 

anticipation of what You'll do next, trimming off the old as needed, to make room for Your new works.