It's starting to get late to be transplanting starter plants, but I reset a handful yesterday:  planting several to replace what hadn't successful originally, plus a few others.

As I planted, I remembered the words of our long-time gardening neighbor Alice, who would coach, "Pinch the tops of the flowers so they will branch out and be fuller and bloom more." How hard that is to do! We tend to pick the bigger plants with the fullest flowers; now we have to take them off and toss them away?

I heeded Alice's long-time advice (on most of them; they are prettier if I don't!) and topped the flowers.

God sometimes does that to us or allows things which 'aren't that beautiful' to come into our lives. As our Heavenly Father, He better knows that as we are 'pinched' by some experience, we will be able to grow, develop, and branch out into the lives He has planned for us.

Praise be to Him!

"He cuts off every branch in us that bear no fruit,

while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful."

~ John 15:2 NIV

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