Confessed Murderer!

Guilty!  I confess…I am a murderer…a murderer of green growing things in my care.   Not all of them, but some of them do make the trip home from the nursery to certain doom.  Take the “Case of the Lovely Asters”.  When I picked up the three pots months ago, they were loaded with spectacular periwinkle colored blooms that I thought would look great out back.  However, nothing could have prepared them for the rugged conditions of my yard in the Augusta summer.   Sprinklers and extra waterings were just not enough to make them survive, let alone thrive, and soon they were doing the ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ routine in my garden.   

I decided to remove them and replace them with something more along the lines of a succulent that could make it in Death Valley.   When I dug the asters up, I just didn’t have the heart to toss them over the fence into no man’s land, remembering just how pretty they were when I brought them home.   So I tucked all three tired, brown, withered plants into a nearby pot, and stashed them behind a tree, sort of my version of burying the evidence of my horticultural crime.

Fast forward to a cooler day in October where rain happens occasionally, and the sun still shines, but with mercy.  The brave asters have leafed out, all brand new, and even dared to bloom.  I don’t think I deserve much credit here.  But I do love the picture of something that was dead and gone being alive and beautiful!  Ephesians 4:24 challenges us to ‘put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.’   Don’t you love a happy ending, even in a murder mystery?