First, I decided to try my hand at making "starts" from the roses at old house. Those roses were my Mother's Day gift last year and they were SOOOO beautiful! I'm sure hoping these starts do well so that I can continue to enjoy them for years to come.
Then, a couple of weeks ago the Master Gardeners group volunteered to do some landscaping here at CH3. In meeting and emailing the leader of this group, I came to a realization - relationships are more important than flowers. Let me explain...... The front sidewalk here at Challenge House is lined on both sides with monkey grass and would look really nice if properly tended. However, since our house is located at a busy corner, the sidewalk leading to our front porch is a popular turn around spot for all the neighbor kids (and my own kids) when riding their bikes. This means that the monkey grass is constantly getting trampled. At first, we tried to kindly remind the kids to be mindful of the monkey grass, but it wasn't working. That's when I realized that I was going to have to choose between the landscaping and the kids. If I continued to nag and fuss about the monkey grass, then the kids were not going to want to be around our house, feeling unwelcome. That was NOT what we wanted! Building relationships with our neighbors is the reason we are here! So, we pulled out the landscaping border that was already heavily damaged from all the bicycles and decided that we were not going to worry about the monkey grass anymore. I even spoke with the Master Gardeners and explained the situation to them and asked that they not do any additional landscaping around the sidewalk when they came. Thankfully, they totally understood. They focused their efforts on the porch area and it is just beautiful!
Praise the Lord we are surrounded by families with children and those children know that they are welcome at our house!
"And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me." Matthew 18:5
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