What's Bloomin'?

As most everyone knows by now, my yard is officially landscaped! After a year of being in this house, it was time to do some much needed work to the yard. I greatly enjoyed daydreaming about which plants to choose and what to put where. I bet I changed my mind at least a dozen times, even after I started buying them. While I did not enjoy the actual labor of the task, having it all finished has been a great reward.

After waiting for what seemed like forever, my gardenias in the back are now full of blooms. I love the aroma of this simply beautiful flower. How can anything so small give off such a powerful scent? I don't know but it's part of the reason why I picked them for this space. I knew they would be extremely fragrant. I could just see myself enjoying them while spending time out in the back yard.

However, before the bushes blossomed something else starting sprouting up in my garden - mushrooms! Yuck! These weren't pretty little button or yummy portobello mushrooms, much less any other variety I was familiar with. They were ugly fungi with weird shapes and shading, and they were growing around my newly planted bushes. I was not pleased.

Not really having a clue in the first place about gardening, I contacted some friends and did some research on-line in order to find out how I could stop them from growing.

One friend said particular types of mulch have trash or junk in them that makes it a hearty breeding ground for the fungi. I did not buy the types she mentioned. Hmm... That wasn't it.

Another friend suggested that the mulch and dirt needed time to adjust to each other and the moisture levels. Okay. That made sense. I guess.

The web sites I looked at said similar things, but pretty much every response was the same. They will go away after a while and they won't hurt anything. Just keep pets out of reach and don't eat them. Well there was no chance of either of those happening. Tiger didn't seem at all interested and steered pretty clear of the beastly things. They also weren't about to show up in any of my homemade dishes!

So, I let them be. Kind of. I can't help but dig them up from time to time. They seem to grow over night and then live for about a day. I come home from work. Dig and then turn the soil. That has pretty much been my routine since they first showed up.

Tonight while I was out back, I was admiring all the gardenias and marveling at how crazy it was to see such beauty side by side with these ugly old mushrooms. Then I had a thought. Our lives are a lot like that.

If we desire beauty in our lives we will allow the Master Gardener to painstakingly till, weed and plant in our gardens good seed that will take root and produce beautiful fruit when we tend it carefully. However, if we've failed to uproot the weeds, and dead things from our lives that the fungi can feed on, the two will grow up together.

The good news is, if we continue to faithfully tend our garden and to allow the unwanted things to come to the surface, then our loving Father will help us deal with them and their roots. With His help, before too long the only thing visible will be the beauty He originally intended for HIS garden.

I don't know about you but my garden needs constant tending. Most of the time I feel as though I don't know what I'm doing, or as though I'm doing it all wrong. That's okay.

I'm so glad I don't have to be good at this, because I'm not. I just know that I was created to live a life full of beauty. I want what is blooming in my garden to reflect that, even if it means that from time to time I'll have to uproot a little fungi.