HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?
MASTER GARDENER
JEAN LAIRD

While lying in the hospital recuperating, my son Brant brought me a magazine to read called, "Birds and Blooms." I can highly recommend this for your future reading. I was so impressed by an article called, 'Flowers Mark the Milestones,' written by Bernice Maddux from Weatherford, Texas, that I called her and asked her permission to reprint it. I found Mrs. Maddux to be a delightful person, interested and excited about gardening, and she confessed she is my age. See, you don't have to while away your time in a rocking chair when you become a senior citizen! Here is her article about the importance of flowers.

Flowers Mark the Milestones

Flowers are more than a feast for our eyes and perfume for the air we breathe. The also mark the milestones of our lives.

Flowers speak a silent language anyone can understand. The value of flowers is without measure; their benefits immediate. How can you place a price on the twinkle of an eye, a heartfelt smile or an uplifted spirit?

Friends and family send flowers to welcome newborns into the world. Parents grip bouquets while watching their children's recitals, waiting to reward them for the hours of practice. Flowers show their sweet faces at graduation exercises and help celebrate anniversaries.

There are more flowers at weddings than any other happy occasion in our lives. They give brides something to steady their quivering hands, decorate the lapels of solemn groom, and act as badges of courage for sentimental mother and fathers.

I can think of no situation or occasion -- happy or sad -- where flowers cannot make things better.

People who have fallen on bad health need flowers like meadows need rain. I have no proof, but believe that flowers are instrumental in the recovery process, especially in the healing of the heart.

And at our final resting place, flowers encircle the spot, marking with beauty the last milestone this side of Heaven.

I think God must have loved flowers. He made so many of them for us to enjoy.

Thank you, Bernice. Flowers make me smile. Next week: Bird Bath and Beyond

The Happy Gardener A garden isn't meant to be useful. It's for joy. - Rumer Godden