4 o’clock plants

6/6/2010

4 o’clock plants

Point 1
I have a plant called a 4 o’clock because its blooms don’t open until 4:00 in the afternoon. They bloom all night, have a wonderful fragrance, and close up again in the morning. This one now has almost 100 blossoms – 2 months ago - the same plant was a 1-stalk, 15 inch high twig - now it is more than 4 ft tall and just as wide!!!!!!! Talk about the effects of spiritual food (fertilizer) and streams of living water!!! What a transformation – in such a short time!!! What a wonderful way for God to confirm my healing!!! Much better than looking at a band aid, getting a shot, or taking medicine.

Point 2
This large flowered plant was a complete – but very pleasant – surprise!!!!!!!! It sneaked into my garden as a seed when my neighbor gave me a small green succulent. It was growing too close to the other plant to separate them, so I refer to them as the parent and the child. I wrote before about families on D-Day, and this relationship in my garden reminds me again of the importance of our families. The child-plant is actually taking care of the adult-plant by protecting it from the hot sun. I can part the flowered branches of the child and see the parent below, thriving, putting out more branches and more leaves on those branches – flourishing under the child-plant’s protection, care, and LOVE!!
They mirror God and mankind in reverse – God is the 4 o’clock, loving and protecting me, and I am now the succulent underneath.

Point 3
Something whimsical about this 4 0’clock - I named this area of my garden Ferngully, after a children’s animated movie about fairies living in a rain forest. I had 3 tiny fairy sculptures sitting under a mushroom sculpture in a corner of this flowerbed, but had to move them because they got covered up by the 4oclocks! Then I realized that the 4 o’clocks are like a rainforest canopy! Underneath, there are all kinds of life – smaller 4:00 plants, 2 more succulent leaf parent-plants, a variegated leaf plant, snails, lizards, toads… The fairies are covered up by their growth again but I am not going to relocate them. Let them live in peace in their miniature rainforest, without interference from Man and our bulldozers.

Point 4
These 4 o’clocks are so prolific that they are taking over the front flower bed - even growing in the cracks of the sidewalks. My husband thinks I should pull up the ones in the sidewalk, but I don’t have the heart to kill them. Suddenly all life is sacred to me. These 4 o’clocks have a strong life force!!! I like to bask in it!!!

Addendum to Divine health report about the 4 o’clock’s, 6/10/10:

This afternoon I was watering my 4:00 plants, basking in their life force, and suddenly, a beautiful blue dragonfly flew over the plants and lit on the rocks on the other side of the sidewalk. It was about 2 inches long and a soft pastel blue. You may have noticed in some of my earlier pictures that I have a blue dragonfly yard ornament in this part of my garden. I have since purchased some butterfly and dragonfly stepping stones too. Butterflies signify change – from a lowly crawling caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly that can soar through the air. To me dragonflies represent heavenly beings. There is a children’s story called Waterbugs and Dragonflies* given to children by Hospice counselors. It explains death in a nonthreatening way to young children. In the story the bugs live under water and one day, when they get old enough, they climb out of the water and turn into dragonflies; they soar through the air, then realize what fun they are having and want to go back under water to tell the other bugs what it is like. But try as they might, they cannot go back under the water. “Oh, well,” they say to themselves. “The other bugs will have to wait until it is their time to come out of the water.” God is reassuring me that He has a whole legion of divine heavenly beings looking out for me and protecting me!!!

*by Doris Stickney Pilgrim Press, 1982 New York – available on Amazon.com