Choosing the uplifting

So today was spent on a task that I hadn't planned, and quite frankly didn't enjoy. Sunday morning I completed a gorgeous flower bed in the Wish Garden, filling it with beautiful blooming periwinkle, white and pink vinca, and some lovely lavender wildflowers Rich dug up from the perimeter of the property. With the bird bath placed at the center, it was a most bright spot in the developing garden. But, Sunday afternoon and again yesterday afternoon we were hit with sudden, SEVERE weather, with hurricane-force gusts, hail, and torrential rain that persisted for about 2 hours each day. Since The Enchanted Forest is just that - a forest - you can imagine the number of downed limbs and debris that we were left with. And, since the Wish Garden is mostly under 60+' tall pine trees, the volume of limbs and pine cones pelting down on everything in sight left me dejected and sad. My newest flower bed was demolished, and everything is covered in soggy leaves, pine straw, hard immature pine cones and branches. Things were blown down, overturned, broken and generally trashed. So I turned my back on the Garden for the day, too disappointed to even deal with it, and tackled the job of cleaning up the rest of the property. Five hours and many wheelbarrow loads later, the pile of debris was taller than me!

But instead of posting photos of the trashed Garden, or even the huge pile of debris that I single-handedly created, I'll choose the uplifting . . . and show a 'before' of the flower bed, and our recently-completed mantel makeover. Changing it from a dark, disappearing-into-the-wall-color wood tone to white and adding new tile made all the difference! So here's a "how we found it when we bought the house" and an "after' taken today! Yea! One task marked of the list! Hundreds more to go . . . including cleaning up the Garden. Tomorrow.