A Sad Story

One week ago we brought home some Annabelle hydrangea bushes from the nursery. They really, truly looked like this. They were gorgeous. Our plan was to have some mulch delivered the following day and go to work planting. Knowing we had a wedding in a couple of days, I decided to postpone the planting one week.

About three days ago, all the beautiful blossoms started to wilt and the leaves too and got worse day after day. It made me ill to look at them. It makes me sad and embarrassed that something so gorgeous went so downhill under my care.

We got them in the ground as promised yesterday, mulch and Miracle-Gro and all, and I am literally praying for them. I have shed tears over these hydrangeas (Danilo's just happy it's not over something he did :). I have heard that plants in distress will do better if you lop off their blossoms so the energy can go to saving the plant. The man at the nursery said over the phone he agreed and that he's fairly confident I can bring them back. So I chopped off all the once-popcorn-ball-sized-now-wilting-near-dead blossoms with a pair of scissors and I'm reporting it here so you can hopefully share in my joy when they bloom again.

OUCH

(There are four of them total.)


Thanks for listening.

On a happier note, look at our lovely lawn!! I am so proud of Danilo!

Introducing My First Ever Brother-In-Law

... and his darling new wife. Jordan and I go WAY back. There's this Primary song about the baptism of Jesus that tells how he was baptized "in the river Jordan's flow." I remember learning the song in church one Sunday and not grasping the larger picture, but imagining a bunch of Jordan Pearts flowing in a river. We grew up in the same neighborhood til we moved when I was 13, but we still attended the same jr. high and high schools. While we never ate lunch at the same table or ran around with the same crowd, I always remember respecting him from a distance. He seemed like the kind of guy who didn't need to experiment with some of the garbage those stages of life can offer. He seemed to have it together.

He had Chelsea from day one. Their wedding day was among one of the sweetest days of my life. Days like that are the very substance of life because of moments like this

and all the quiet ones happening in your heart reassuring you that these people and these times are what matter the very most.