early Dead Flower

ome time ago Baron Von Lodge was the head of a small country near Switzerland known as Lilliland.

While walking around Lilliland one afternoon, Lady Angela of Alpine Castle, the Baron’s fiancée, came across a small potted flower laying on its side and very dried up. It looked like someone had thrown it out in the rubbish.

Lady Angela saw the sorrowful little plant and decided to take it back to her castle and show it to her greenhouse keeper. When the greenhouse keeper looked at the small, shriveled potted plant, he looked at Lady Angela and said that this plant was too far-gone, but she should give it some water and plant food. He said he would look up in his encyclopedia of plants to see what it is, or was.

To his surprise, it was an unusual oriental passionflower plant. The information about the plant was that if it was treated with love and respect, it would flourish, but if ignored, it would shrivel up and that would be its end.

With this information, Lady Angela took the plant to her private chambers and began to talk to the plant. She said that if the plant lived, it would always be loved.

For several days, the plant was quite dormant. Then one bright morning, a little fresh green leaf appeared. The plant was beginning to respond to Lady Angela’s kind words and pleasant, loving disposition.

Every few days, a new growth would appear and finally, a flower bud popped up. Within a few days the flower bloomed a bright yellow and emitted a light fragrance.

No body was happier than Lady Angela and her greenhouse gardener said, “What someone gave up in despair, lived and bloomed again.”

When Professor Hamblin was told of the passionflower, he commented that as in most situations with Mother Nature, tender loving care in all things is greatly rewarded. As it is true with plants, so it is true with animals, so it is true with humans, as well.

This little flowering plant held a lesson for all to cherish.

Several days later, when Lady Angela was visiting her greenhouse, she heard the keeper singing a song. When Lady Angela asked why he was singing, he replied, “Because it makes the plants happier, and it makes me happier, too.”