Blackberry Lilies: Fruit For The Winter

                    Blackberry Lilies: Fruit For the Winter
Dear Friends,
     A couple of years ago the elderly man across the street gave me a couple of dried stems of Blackberry Lilies.  The shiny black seeds are in clusters and look like big  blackberries!  I brought them in the house and put them in a vase along with some dry ornamental grasses and stems from the silver dollar plant.  
     In the spring  I cleaned up the garden. Then I planted some of the seeds in a couple of places.  The plants grew sword  shaped leaves that  look similar to iris leaves.  Delicate-branched stems with six petaled orange blooms that are speckled with crimson give them a lily-like appearance.
     After the flowers finish blooming the interesting seed pods form. The branches get blown by the wind and  the snow falls around them.  The stems with the black  berry-like seeds  are a contrast against the new snow.
     The thing about these flowers that I love is how the beauty continues and changes from season to season.  God gives us so many examples of how His goodness and provision  are constant, always there but  changing.  
     The birds flock around the garden enjoying the seeds that dropped from the stems.  My vase of dried seed pods and grasses is on the table.  All of this came from a dried branch of seeds from a neighbor.  Now I can share some of my blackberry lily seeds with a friend.  The beauty continues. 

Ecclesiastes 3:11
"God has made everything beautiful in His time..."