Watering Flowers

 
 





Yesterday was a beautiful summer day.  Sunny, breezy, blue sky, and finally nice and warm after a chilly morning.  Since the forecasted quarter inch of rain earlier in the week inexplicably missed our house I decided it would behoove the flowers to give them a drink from the hose.  I snapped a few photos of our flowers along with some of my special assistant.


Coincidentally, the Spurgeon devotion I read (this morning because I was a day late!) seemed to fit nicely with these photos.  So if you missed it too....enjoy it now!

 

C.H. Spurgeon’s June 13^th Devotion from “Faith’s Checkbook”

I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: Lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day. (Isaiah 27:3)

When the Lord Himself speaks in His own proper person rather than through a prophet, the word has a peculiar weight to believing minds. It is Jehovah Himself who is the keeper of His own vineyard; He does not trust it to any other, but He makes it His own personal care. Are they not well kept whom God Himself keeps?

We are to receive gracious watering, not only every day and every hour "but every moment." How we ought to grow! How fresh and fruitful every plant should be! What rich clusters the vines should bear!

But disturbers come; little foxes and the boar. Therefore, the Lord Himself is our Guardian, and that at all hours, both "night and day." What, then, can harm us? Why are we afraid! He tends, He waters, He guards; what more do we need?

Twice in this verse the Lord says, "I will." What truth, what power, what love, what immutability we find in the great "I will" of Jehovah! Who can resist His will? If He says "I will," what room is there for doubt? With an "I will" of God we can face all the hosts of sin, death, and hell. O Lord, since Thou sayest, "I will keep thee," I reply, "I will praise Thee!"

Mini Pool - tell the bees it's a spa day!!!

Special assistant Houdini taking a water fountain break.  Please note the tooth marks in the hose....he punctured a hole in the hose before I even connected it last week. (I found out when I turned on the water and got soaked!)  Now I see it was a part of his plan to stay hydrated in the summer sun.

What I find funny is that he has no compunction about being sprayed in the face and soaked with water!  But I shouldn't  be surprised since last week he ran through sprinklers watering the backyard like a little kid, arriving back at the screen door sopping wet, as  though he had just had a bath. The other two hounds sat nearby...completely bone dry!  They are not so young at heart!

After he was done taking a drink, he decided to help with my end of the job.  Needless to say I didn't need anymore hose modifications and he lost his job as assistant.

Snow Day!

We kicked the New Year off in my neck of the woods with a nice snowfall at the beginning of the week.  After writing my New Year's Eve post I thought this snow day series of shots would be a nice follow up.  In that post I mentioned how my hounds are averse to change and love getting into ruts, habits, and doing the same thing EVERY day!   Well, sometimes even when you don't want change, you find that divine intervention can force you into doing things a little different on a day you least expect it.   It took some divine intervention to change up the hound dogs morning romp in the yard....and the results were rather amusing.  Sometimes change can be lots of fun!  I won't have a reading for this post so the photos can be viewed in the series as they unfolded in a few minutes time.  So it is part two for my previous post which you can check out here.

Well enjoy these shots of my hounds learning that into each life some snow must fall!

Found a scent to track

Alert pause....

Target acquired!

Sniff sniff...

Dive!  Dive!

Visual confirmation

"Hey...what are you doing?"

"There is something in there!"

Tag team burrowing

Figgy patrolling the younger fellas

This was Houdini's first encounter with snow.  Although he was born in Canada, we was a spring puppy so he never had a chance to see it before...or eat it, which I think was his favorite part of the whole experience!

And despite all the snow burrowing....Houdini and Smudge never surfaced anything other than more snow.  What were they up to....beats me!  But it was very funny to watch!!

A New Year

Figaro wetting his whistle

It has been another long spell between blog entries.  The weather remains grim and gray, and with all the holiday activities and my busy year end schedule at work I have not had much time to come up with new photos.  But I have been taking snapshots of my humorous hounds as they have settled in for a long winter hibernation.  Not that they mind.  Laying around in a puddle of their own drool, with perpetual morning breath suits them just fine. 

Houdini waiting for dinner in his kennel

They do enjoy a nice romp in the yard once or twice a day....but with this soggy weather it is a recipe for mud splattered undercarriages and wet ears.  I honestly can't wait for the ground to freeze and reduce the muddy paw marks on the floor and the number of extra towels washed weekly from cleaning them up!


 I did read a really nice JR Miller devotional while preparing this blog entry.  And to some it may seem silly to think of basset hounds when writing about the New Year, but it actually is very fitting for the excerpt below. I will explain at the bottom how these two things relate! ;-)

  

By J.R. Miller:

Smudge thinks he's king

We ought never to be willing to live any year—just as we lived the last one. No one is striving after the best things—who is not intent on an upward and a forward movement continually. The circular movement is essential too, the going around and around in the old grooves, routine work, daily tasks; yet, even in this treadmill round, there should be constant progress. We ought to do the same things, better each day. Then in the midst of the outward routine—our inner life ought to be growing in earnestness, in force, in strength, in depth.

Yet there are some people whose life year by year is only a going around and around in the old beaten paths, with no onward movement. They are like men who walk in a circular course for a prize, covering a thousand miles, perhaps, but ending just where they began. Rather, our daily walk should be like one whose path goes around a mountain, but climbs a little higher with each circuit, until at last he gains the clear summit, and looks into the face of God. While we must do in a measure the same things every day—we should do them a little better with each repetition.

Now how does that JR Miller excerpt relate to my dogs, you might ask.  Well, if you have never had a hound for a pet let me tell you they are perfect examples of daily routine and circular life.  In fact, I have never known a breed of dogs that was so habit driven as a hound.  If they do it once, the idea or behavior becomes embedded in their furry noggins and they will try to repeat it for the rest of their life.

Take Figaro to the left....he learned the bad habit of tipping over my office trash can as a young pup.  He shredded paper and made a mess.  Now every day...like he has a little timer in his brain, he lumbers into my office in the morning after his breakfast.....and tips over the trash can and roots through the papers and makes a mess.  The only upside....I don't need an electric shredder for sensitive documentation!    It really takes effort to break a hound of a habit.....but people are sort of that way too.   But when it comes to growing in grace and living a Christ centered life, I think JR Miller makes a good point for NOT being like my hounds.

Enjoy these shots of my hounds taking their evening nap all over our living room furniture.  This is likely what they will look like tonight around midnight when we ring in 2012....there is a pretty strong chance I will be in a similar repose as well.  So let me be the first to say, HAPPY NEW YEAR!   May the Lord make us better than we were as we cross into a new year.

James 4:13-15

“Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.”

Weather Woes

 Hi everyone!  I have been realizing this week how long it has been since I posted to the blog.  I wasn't kidding when I said that gloomy November was a real dry spell for photo taking.  The weather is very soggy and that keeps this shutterbug indoors....because my equipment, like myself, is like sugar and spice and everything nice!  It would be a shame to melt in the rain.....so I have been waiting for the first snowfall.  But I remember I did have some shots of the first frost from the end of October that I never got around to sharing yet. 

I have been spending more time in the kitchen baking and cooking to beat the blues with the dreary weather.  True to Ohioan form, I tend to grumble about the weather sometimes.  Especially when a day of clouds and rain stretches into several weeks.  And it must have gotten the better of some of the adults in my family, as my very handsome nephew, age 4, innocently said this week, "Well, it is God who makes the weather after all."   Out of the mouths of babes!  What a charming reminder of how a Christan should view the weather....even if you live in the Ohio Valley.

By Arthur Pink:

"He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes.  He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold?  He sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow."

Psalm 147:16-18

What a declaration is this! The changes of the elements are beneath God's sovereign control. It is God who withholds the rain—and it is God who gives the rain . . .

  when He wills,

  where He wills,

  as He wills, and

  on whom He wills!

Truly, then, God governs the elements!

Earth and wind,

fire and rain,

hail and snow,

stormy winds and angry seas

—all obey His omnipotent word—and fulfill His sovereign pleasure! Therefore, when we complain about the weather, we are, in reality, murmuring against God!

Let His Word speak once more:

"Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places.  He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain; he bringeth the wind out of his treasuries." Psalm 135:6-7

"All things are in the hands of God, have Him for their Author, and are directed and governed by Him to such ends as are most suitable to His wise providence. Whoever complains of the weather—complains of the God who ordains the weather!"  -William Law

 As usual I had a feline companion on this quick pre-breakfast shoot.  Truth be told, I threw outerwear and  boots on over my pajamas and headed outside the minute I drew up my blinds and saw there was frost!  That is a brisk way to greet the day, let me tell you!

I also had a trio of romping hounds jumping on me!  Normally they are on their own in the morning to sniff and patrol the backyard, so they were excited to have human company.  Big Fig, the mature man of the pack, was reluctant to step onto the crunchy cold grass, so he modeled for me with a wagging tail instead.