Summer

imageThis is the first Summer living in my childhood home since I moved out 24 years ago. It’s special to get to be here. So many memories to be remembered that would stay forgotten if I weren’t here.

When I was a girl summer weekends meant hard work. The yard would be mowed, the garden tended, and the house cleaned. Then the best part came in the evening.

A good meal and enjoying our rest after the day’s work. If a late afternoon thunderstorm rolled in and cooled the air, Dad would prop the screen door open. If not, the small air conditioning unit in the window would keep us cool.

imageI walked around the house today enjoying the unearned beauty all around me. The ivy growing in the cedar tree. The day lilies in whites and yellows and oranges. The fruit trees and blackberries and muscadine vines. The Rose of Sharon and gardenia and the magnolia.

All the work of those before me.

 

Summer will always be lightning bugs blinking, cicadas humming, mosquitoes biting.

Tomato sandwiches, homemade ice cream, vegetable dinners.

Afternoon thunderstorms, long days, hot nights.image

 

God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.   Ecclesiastes 3:11 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magnolia


An unseasonably warm day of winter here in North Alabama gets me outside to explore the yard. The sun shines through the leaves of this beautiful magnolia tree. I can’t remember when Dad planted this tree. It must have been a long time ago because magnolias are slow to grow and this one is a good size.

I do remember the day I pulled up for a visit and Dad was about to cut the tree down. I asked him not to and here it is now….filtering the sun through its waxy green leaves in a beautiful pattern onto the ground below. It will stay here and grow taller, slowly taller and wider.

And I will think of Dad often because of this magnolia tree.

In response to the Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge Seasons.