I Dig This Drill!

Today the sun shone! Praise the Lord. It's been more than two weeks since we have had some serious sunshine! And in this morning's mail was my order from Breck's - no not shampoo, bulbs! 100 watt tulip bulbs: double pinks, purples and creamy whites fringed with fire red. All summer I looked for a bulb planting drill bit and long last my search was rewarded with a winner!
Twenty four inches of "drill-a-bility" to make digging planting a snap. Seven bucks for saving back muscles and knee bones! Not bad. So this afternoon in the not-so-warm sunshine (after all it is late October in Northern Iowa) I dug in and drilled to my fill - until every bulb was tucked in the ground for winter.
Funny - how when you plant something totally new in the garden, you fantasize how it will look in the spring. As I buried each promise of spring in the cold damp black earth, I imagined the creamy white beauties floating above my periwinkle, the pink doubles rioting in my rock garden, the lavender ladies dancing on the slope of the terrace, and eye-popping powder puffs of allium dwarfing hostas in the courtyard. I worked until the temperature and my muscles reminded me it wasn't Spring, and I'm not thirty any more. This may well be the last planting day - a gift so late in the season by God who loves gardens almost as much as those who tend them.
A full week prevented me from posting the sermon from Sunday October 18th. It is the second half of the two sermon series "Surrender and Self-Denial." To read it, click on the piece of pecan pie.