I was touched last week by a friend’s story about a trip to the store. She went just to keep her husband company. She doesn’t often garden, but that day she decided spontaneously to purchase flowers for the window boxes on the front of her house.

She says, “We planted them the first two years we lived here, but somehow life seemed to make the purchase of flowers a luxury and so the window boxes sat empty the last two years.”

I know that my friend’s husband has been ailing; you can read between the lines of her updates and know that her energy goes to caring for him and working in retail and trying to get through some difficult days. She continued her flower box story: “Someone once said that the planting of flowers was a statement of hope for the future and I believe that was my honest motivation. Maybe they will also be a sign to those who drive by that we believe in our future–one way or another.”

So the empty flower boxes are empty no longer. The bright blooms will no doubt cheer my friend’s heart. And yes, they are a sign to all who see. Hope lives here. It pops up in rich colors. Extravagant, generous, varied.

Hope lives in the flowers; hope can live in our hearts, too.

Linking up with Inspired Tuesdays and  Texture Tuesdays. Photos were processed using two textures on each photo from Kim Klassen’s Chase, Shine, Phoebe, and Let’s Go.

Why do tulips make us smile? Maybe it’s not only because of their delicate beauty but also because they are the first flower of Spring. Tulips bloom, winter is past. The browns and grays and whites of winter have been chased away by these bearers of vivid color.

I think of tulips as flowers of hope, flowers that have conquered. Not all flowers grow on stems newly pushed up through the dirt. Roses bloom on thorny stems that have stood dormant during the colder months. Bush flowers like hibiscus burst out of green hedges. Trees decorate themselves with fragrant magnolias. But tulips — they grow from bulbs that are planted in the dark soil during the cool season and there they stay, unseen, until Spring comes. Then they break through and announce that the days of new life are here again. Long forgotten through the darker days, they poke up and all of a sudden gardens are graced with brilliant reds, deep purples, tender pinks. What we saw all winter as a dead patch out in the wind and weather is now alive with celebration.

Any particular hour or day or season of our lives we may find ourselves in a dark place. It may seem we are buried by our cares. This Spring, we can look at the tulips and remember their message of hope. Our eyes and our souls can feast on the fragile flowers that have overcome the packed, once-frozen dirt.

How about you? Is your world today in need of some color? Is the celebration still to come, or is your life full of brilliant blooms you can share with us?

Linking up with Sweet Shot Tuesdays , Inspired Tuesday, and Texture Tuesdays, where the assignment this week is “pink,” The photo is processed with a layer of Kim Klassen’s texture Embrace.