Welcome. I am so happy that you stopped by. My garden gate is always open for you to come in and sit and relax with a hot drink. We are having unusually cold weather in Southern California and today I made you hot chocolate to warm you up while I share with y0u a beautiful experience that I had yesterday involving Poinsettias. First let's join Bentley, my Studio Assistant, in the garden and he will show you our Poinsettias.
I volunteer at my church to take care of the flowers that people leave at the little stone grotto with a statue of Mary( the Mother of Jesus) outside our Catholic church. I arrange and straighten up flowers that are left. It is a simple and joyful task. Yesterday, December 8th, was a special day honoring Mary . I previously read a little notice on the church bulletin board that suggested ways to celebrate Advent - such as helping the poor and decorating your home with lights and Poinsettia. It said that legend has it that a poor child in Mexico having nothing to give the Christ Child on his birthday gathered some weeds into a lovely bouquet, the only gift she had to offer. When she brought her gift to the manger the simple weeds were transformed into a brilliant red bloom - the Poinsettia - now known as "The Flower of the Holy Night".
I volunteer at my church to take care of the flowers that people leave at the little stone grotto with a statue of Mary( the Mother of Jesus) outside our Catholic church. I arrange and straighten up flowers that are left. It is a simple and joyful task. Yesterday, December 8th, was a special day honoring Mary . I previously read a little notice on the church bulletin board that suggested ways to celebrate Advent - such as helping the poor and decorating your home with lights and Poinsettia. It said that legend has it that a poor child in Mexico having nothing to give the Christ Child on his birthday gathered some weeds into a lovely bouquet, the only gift she had to offer. When she brought her gift to the manger the simple weeds were transformed into a brilliant red bloom - the Poinsettia - now known as "The Flower of the Holy Night".I loved the legend and decided to take Poinsettia's to decorate the grotto to go along side of the flowers that others had placed there. As I was placing my Poinsettias, a woman came up carrying a branch of pine greenery. She appeared to be very poor and said that she had never seen the grotto look so beautiful as it did with the red Poinsettias . She said that she had no money to buy beautiful flowers and felt that her pine branch was not worthy to be placed by the beautiful flowers. I assured her that the pine branch was lovely and would be the perfect compliment to the red flowers. I asked her if I could arrange the branches for her and she reluctantly gave me the branch and stood in the background. I broke off the green pine from the branch and placed the greenery among the Poinsettias along with pine cones that another person left. It was amazing how much beauty the greenery added to the flowers. I looked at the lady and she was smiling - we both hugged each other and I said - "look at how beautiful the flowers look with the addition of your pine branch" and she said "yes - together we made something beautiful". I could not help but thinking about the Legend of the Poinsettia .
