Miss Alma

All my life I have loved playing in the dirt. I get that yearning honestly because all my family for generations before me farmed for a living. Today I love our small farm because it gives me opportunities each day to watch fruit trees, vines and bushes, vegetables, trees, flowers, and shrubs grow.

I even have a graduate degree in agriculture with an emphasis in horticulture. I don’t usually tell people about the degree because they automatically have questions about house plants. I studied vegetables and, consequently, I know little about house plants. However, this bit of advice on houseplants usually satisfies the inquisitive: more house plants die from over watering then from lack of water.

One of my favorite plants is the daylily. It is a very hardy plant and will thrive in some of the most difficult soil environments. Unfortunately, day lilies are like candy to deer, so I am unable to plant them all over our farm. We do have quite a collection around our home where the yard dogs keep the deer at bay. Over time different varieties of daylilies planted too close together will cross pollinate and after several years they will produce only the orangish flowers that you see growing wild in some places. We have some very unusual varieties that I have collected over the years.

Through the years when we were back in the states, I would find some daylilies that I liked and would take them to my mother’s where we would plant them in her yard. When we returned to live in the states 20 years ago, I started transplanting some of the daylilies to my yard, so I have been able to dig some of them up and move them to our present home.

Some of my favorite varieties in our yard came from Miss Alma’s daylily garden. We first met Miss Alma Pittman while speaking at First Baptist Church, Winona, Mississippi years ago. She was a small frail-looking lady all stooped over. Cheryl and I visited only once in her home. She was the proverbial hoarder. We walked around tall piles of magazines and odds and ends in her living room. We did not sit down because most seats were covered with “stuff.”

Miss Alma had invited us to her home to get some of her daylilies. Beside her modest little house, she had a half-acre plot of daylilies. They were her pride and joy, and in her town she was known as the “daylily woman.” She sold daylilies and gave 100% of the money from those sales to her church for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for international missions.

God created the daylily bloom for a purpose: to give joy for one day. After blooming for one day, the flower shrivels up, wilts, dries up and falls off the plant. God had a different purpose for us as He created us to relate to Him and our fellow earth travelers to radiate the joy of the Lord to each other. Each day the Lord refreshes His joy in us so that we can bloom for others to see Jesus in us.

Please consider giving to support international missions through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering through your local church or here: https://www.imb.org/give-now/?projectid=f9lmco