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| My blooms were this color but brighter and fuller, like a triangular Christmas tree. |
Our helper and I aimed at creating a V with no crossing branches, a narrow base showing off the bark, and all blooms/seedheads lopped off the top.
This summer I had the most attractive, filled out, and gloriously colored blooms in the entire area patrolled by Sassy. I told our helper - "It was your pruning, the location, and the earthworms..."
"You and your earthworms," he interrupted with a grin.
I said, "Gardeners measure productivity with earthworms."
My gardening neighbor looked at our pile of branches, grinned, and said, "Some day you boys will be great gardeners." I stood at full attention and saluted briskly.
He added, "Your roses are the best. The ones you gave us have lasted all week."
We arranged the cut branches in the compost so they would not affect my pet pumpkin growing in the pile. Crepe myrtle branches are rather soft, so they will add organic matter and some air spaces to new layer of leaves this fall. Finished compost will be used in the spring.
I am cutting up stray clippings for additional mulch around the base of the bush. I moved the solar-powered faerie lights from the rose garden to the top branches of the bush.
I told the girls on the corner to look for the new lights after dark. Their mother said, "I just read Sassy's blog. It is fantastic to see her jumping for a ball." Earlier Sassy sat down near their father, kissed baby Sophia, and began guarding the two. Their father approved, "Those dogs are good at protecting babies."
Despising Abundance
Many despise crepe myrtles because the plant grows all over the South, requiring little care, blooming for many weeks and ready to re-bloom with pruning. Crepe myrtles love the sun but are not greedy for water, an unusual combination. They can be trained many ways or left to spread out and grow taller. Bees love to work their compound flowers. They flower in pink, purple, and raspberry.
Likewise, earthworms and soil creatures are among the most abundant living things on earth. Soil productivity, animal health, and our health all depend on these laborers. If they went away, prayers would ascend for their return. The soil would flatten out and become like pottery in some areas. In others, the soil would blow away from the lack of humus production.
Everywhere we can see what happens when people ignore the characteristics embedded in plants and animals at Creation. Crepe myrtle planted in deep shade fails to thrive. Roses left unpruned stop blooming. Dogs denied the love and attention they crave whine and waste away.
The Word that fashioned the universe in six 24-hour days is the same efficacious Word that declares us righteous through faith in Christ. Larry Olson was challenged for not having any Gospel in his sermon at conferences organized (and required) to promote the Church Growth Movement. He responded, "I assumed you knew the Gospel."
Everyone should have recoiled in horror at such blasphemy. Luther and all the Reformers believed in the proclamation of the Gospel as central and essential for the work of the Church, creating the good trees of faith that produce the fruit of the Spirit. But no, they cracked jokes about Larry the Harmless Heretic and went on with their wandering in the wilderness, led to and fro by Fuller Seminary graduates.
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| This crepe mytle has assumed the big umbrella look of a maple tree, while other specimens are shaped to become a tall vase of blooms. |
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| We harvest borage several times a day, from the rose garden, and have 30 flowers at a time remaining. |