Think of your marriage as a beautiful and dazzling flower garden. In an acre of astounding floral beauty, you and your husband have planted azaleas, roses, chrysanthemums, daisies, carnations, violets, geraniums, and several more varieties of your favorite flowers.
Since this flower garden is very valuable to both of you, you nurture your flowers with the greatest of love, and you both toil with the duties and responsibilities given to you from when you first started the garden. You both work so very hard to make sure each flower is tended with the utmost care. This flowerbed is the most picturesque site to behold. Your friends and family all wish they had your flower garden.
People from all over town peak into your backyard to enjoy the beauty and aroma of your garden. One day while you are out shopping, a jealous stranger trespasses onto your property and digs up several plots of roses and azaleas, roots and all, and plants them in his own backyard.
This wicked act completely devastates the both of you and each blames the other for the attack to the flower garden. You began to scream and call each other names. You tell your husband to replant more flowers since it was his fault. He tells you to do the replanting because it is your fault. Weeks go by and neither you nor your husband have talked to each other since the flower garden attack.
One day, you cannot stand the dreadful silence around the house any longer, and you tell your husband that it really wasn’t his fault. You kiss and make up, and decide to replant the flowers together. So the next day, you and your husband replant more flower seeds in the barren spots where the flowers were taken.
Everyday the two of you work with the soil so the flowers will come up just as beautiful as before. You water and feed the sprouts and even talk to them because you love them so much. But now you’re both worried that more flowers will be taken or destroyed. The problem is you just don’t feel like taking the time to protect your flowerbed - its just too much trouble out of your daily schedule to do anything about it, besides you really don’t think it will happen again.
Days pass, and you forget the tragic episode.
Again, everyday without fail you and your husband give your flowers the tender loving care they so much need. You water, feed, and even talk to your breathtaking vegetation. You highly prize each and every flower and it shows in the intricate beauty and delicate care of each different variety.
After planting, caring, and tending your garden for several years, the same stranger becomes even more envious and trespasses again, this time bringing his three dogs with him. The dogs run wildly through your backyard and right into your flower garden, trampling all the dazzling plants to the ground.
Both of you are overcome with sadness and despair; your flower garden was your life! You built it up to be the most stunning specimen of a flower garden of its kind. You thought you had it well protected, after all, it was in your own backyard.
Your flower garden is what brought you peace and tranquility. You planted it with superior seeds, and cared for it every single day with great tenderness and love, and now it is destroyed! All destroyed! Your life is destroyed!
What did this husband and wife forget to do for their flower garden? What was the most important thing they could have done to protect their garden?
What about a fence? They didn’t have a fence around it.
What would you do? Would you replant the beautiful flower garden that you built up and nurtured? What would be a wise thing to do for your flower garden? Build a tall fence around it so the enemies cannot trample in and take what they want?
It is the same way with marriage. What would you do? Would you let satan enter in and destroy the love and trust that you and your spouse worked so hard at building up through the years? Would you let strangers trespass and take what doesn’t belong to them? What is the most important thing you can do for your marriage? Protect it! Build your marriage upon the rock so the enemies cannot come in and destroy it?
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat up against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” Matthew 7:24-25
Angie Lewis is the author of two marriage books.
“Journey on the Roads Less Traveled”, a book about love, life, addiction, and marriage.
“Love The Man Your Married. This book tackles areas in marriage that couples need to know and understand and apply for a successful marriage. This book is a most reliable resource for married couples, from infidelity issues to complete forgiveness.
For more information on these books visit Angie’s website and signup for the free monthly newsletter while you’re there! http://www.heavenministries.com
Picture a constant supply of beautiful cut flowers for your home, or fresh cut flowers for friends, and special occasions. Beautiful flowers at your disposal are possible by planting a well-stocked flower garden.
To begin your flower garden, select a sunny area, as a flower garden usually requires 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight each day. The selected area should be easily accessible for watering, in case your climate encounters long dry spell. Another factor for your flower garden is easy access for cutting your flowers, such as a raised flowerbed. The raised flowerbed is then accessible from all sides.
Fall Bulb Planting
In order to have a constant supply of flowers available, consider when each flower blooms. For instance, plant Daffodils and Tulip bulbs in the fall for the earliest spring flower. A couple of other early spring flowers to consider for fall planting are: Giant flowering onion, grows 3-4 feet tall, with large purple flowers, and blooms early spring to mid-summer, and Crocus’s bloom in early spring, though there are varieties that bloom through autumn.
Spring Planting
Gladiolus bulbs can be planted in early spring for beautiful blooms from early summer through the first frost. You can plant your gladiolus bulbs as early as two weeks before the last frost. Continue to plant the gladiolus bulbs every two weeks and you will have cut flowers until the first frost.
Annuals such as snapdragons, cosmos, zinnias, etc., are also planted in early spring after the last frost. Consider the length of time it takes your annual to bloom and plant accordingly so that you will have a flower bouquet right through fall.
With a little bit of planning and a little bit of work, your home can have beautiful cut flowers all summer long. Good Luck!
For more information, visit Flower Garden and Spring Garden Flower
It doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting out with your rose garden, or whether you’ve been growing roses for years. There will be a rose gardening book that’s just perfect for your needs. A rose gardening book can help you choose the right rose bushes for your garden, and give you ideas on how to care for them effectively. In return, your garden will flourish and produce magnificent roses year after year. So what exactly can you learn from a rose gardening book.
As a beginner, that question is much easier to answer. Preparing your garden properly before planting roses can make a huge difference to how well they thrive. There’s also a lot of important ongoing maintenance that you need to do, to keep your rose garden in top condition. If you’re looking for a “set and forget” type of garden, then don’t bother planting roses. You need to regularly monitor and maintain your roses, otherwise you’ll find they quickly become unhealthy and fail to bloom well. Although roses will probably survive and do all right without any attention, they will reward you a great deal more if you spend some time on them.
Even if you’re more experienced with gardening in general, or roses in particular, you can gain a great deal from rose gardening books. New rose breeds are always being developed, and you can keep up to date with what’s available in the new guides that are released. Also, caring for roses is a constantly changing field, with new techniques and ideas being developed and tested. Sometimes a book may contain just one new idea you’ve never heard before, but that one tip may make a big difference to the success of your rose garden. We can all do with a greener thumb!
Those who could be considered master rose gardeners can still find helpful information in rose gardening books. Any good expert knows that when you stop learning, you start to go backwards. Learning from other experts in the field is a great way to continually expand and enhance your own knowledge.
Rose gardening books are also a great way to choose the breed of rose you think would look perfect in your garden, or may even give you some clever ideas for designing your rose garden. Books are a fabulous way to find more information about rose gardening, and there’s always something new that you can take away and apply in your own garden.
|
Fo rmore valuable rose gardening information to include tips for spring rose gardening, early autumn rose gardening, late autumn rose gardening, summer rose gardening and winter rose gardening please visit Rose-Gardening-Made-Easy.info. |