Let us now praise summer flowers. From my upstairs window I look down into
my ice-storm devastated woods to discover an array of foxgloves, tall and
beautiful in their mysterious origin. From an upstairs window on the front
of the house I gaze deeply into a lush display of hostas blanketing the
shaded areas under the sugar maples. From the front window of my car
parades an almost non-breaking stream of summer day-lilies. Finally along
the garden wall standing almost-tall is something so unlovely it is lovely.
It beckons humming birds and appears to have been made Tuesday afternoon
just prior to sundown when God was running out of flower parts and dumped
them all into one gene package and labeled them hollyhocks.

If it were not for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday--Tuesday must have been
God's favorite day of Creation. Flowers were creative creation day. It
was as if He tripped and smeared His palette across the fields and
roadsides. Everything was there from deep passionate reds to dazzling
brown-eyed susans ready to lure the bees that were yet forty-eight hours
away. Could we accuse God of deliberately making nectar to inebriate
butterflies that we might laugh at their reelings about our feet?

As that part of earth called Eden turned away from the sun into evening
there was silence. It would be yet two more days before toads and frogs
would fill the night with their courting serenades. That evening when God
said, "That is good" He must have thought, "Oh, yes. But it is going to get
better." The tenors and the bassos, the sopranos and the altos were yet to
do their thing.