Helping Hands

May 10th of this year, with the help of sweet friends, we planted 10 more rows of lavender in the lower portion of our fields.  Wow, I just can't thank our friends enough for giving of their Mother's Day weekend to weed the existing rows, lay pipe for irrigation, and plant new lavenders.  It brings a renewed appreciation for the saying, "many hands make light work!"  With their help we were finished with a task in a matter of hours that would have taken our family of
six . . . days! There were several kiddos that headed back to the house before this picture was taken - they were real troopers removing weeds and leaves! Our oldest son had just left to grill the burgers and join my mom who helped prepare the food - you can't have this much help and not feed 'em!  And our seriously talented daughter was taking the pic - she's awesome!  You should check out her fabulous lifestyle and wedding photography at www.jessica-lauren.com

 

This is a picture of the newly planted lavender after one week of growth, looking happy and already blooming!  Shame on me, I'm supposed to to clip those blooms to encourage more energy to the

 roots of the plant . . . but sometimes I just want to see the beauty!

Here is an established lavender sending up blooms from the sleep of winter.
You can see that even this strong guy suffered some folliage loss; the folliage that's gray and dead!  Sniff, sniff! It's been a slow start with the cooler spring but I'm encouraged by the signs of life.  Unfortunately, we have sustained some loss, nearly six of our established rows suffered from the harsh winter.  However, in light of the loss we have four rows that are blooming beautifully with early flowering varieties of Royal Velvet, Melissa, and Folgate.  I'm so thankful those rows survived! With the loss of so many plants, it has caused us to pause and re-evaluate our lavender dreams and goals . . . more on those aspirations in a later post!

 

One of the four rows that are in bloom - a glorious reminder of God's goodness in nature!