Doing for a Friend

Last June a good friend of mine lost her baby boy on his two week birthday.  There are no answers to what went wrong, and nothing that could possibly make this easier for her and her family, but yesterday we gave her a gift of love that hopefully helps.

Jocelyn and I and many of our friends created a beautiful butterfly garden in her yard, in memory of her baby boy.  It was a lot of work, but we are so happy with how it came out.  It is full of butterfly attracting plants, and it has a kid painted butterfly house, a memorial stone and a butterfly shaped stone that my friend made with her son.  It's full of memories and beautiful things.  I hope it brings her joy for many years to come.

We had a few surprises.  First Jocelyn and I got caterpillars that we watched become butterflies.  We planned to release them once the garden was finished, and it turned out to be the perfect plan!

In their crystalis

Feeding them sugar water

The kids came over a couple weeks ago to paint the butterfly house.

Anxious for freedom!

The garden took lots of helpers, including the kids.  We discovered that pulling out grass, dealing with good old Maryland clay, and lots and lots of rock, was hard work!  It took longer than we thought, but we went from this...

To this...






To this...

Notice the giant pile of rocks we dug out

To the final, beautiful product.

Jocelyn and I had a long talk last night about charity.  Each week when she gets her allowance $1 of her money gets saved for charity.  It's important to me that she understands that charity is about doing for others.  Often it's about giving to the less fortunate, but yesterday it was about making a good friend smile.  I feel really good about what we did yesterday.  It was something good that could be made from something so sad.  In memory of a precious little boy.