"Mary Hillhouse Flowers" Greeting Cards

I love photography and my mom loved gardening and growing flowers.  I am doing a project connecting our mother-daughter love through photography.  I have designed a greeting card collection featuring the flowers from my mom's garden "Mary Hillhouse Flowers".  The collection consists of 8 5"x7"photo cards featuring three flowers on the front.  I also designed notecards featuring her day lilies. They are being printed by Shutterfly and I am also printing my own photo cards. Several years ago, I had greeting cards professionally printed as a gift to her featuring her flowers and she was very proud of her cards and she loved sending cards to family and friends.  During her battle with pancreatic cancer, I sent her cards of encouragement with her favorite flowers.

 

A photo of her watering her flowers and garden beds.  She took loving care of her flowers and the yard was full of blooms and birds.

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

 

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
by Henry Wadesworth Longfellow


The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveler hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.


Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.


The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but evermore
Returns the traveler to the shore,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.


John 5:11  "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life."

In Loving Memory
Mary Lee Smith-Brown (1928-2019)
Photo:  Gulf of Mexico, Panama City, Florida

A Psalm of Life

A Psalm of Life
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.


Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.


Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.


Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.


In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!


Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,-act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!


Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;


Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing shall take heart again.


Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fare;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn no labor and to wait.




This poem expresses how a person's "footprint in the sands of time" can impact the lives of others.  Throughout her life, my mom reached out to countless others in need:  cooking meals,  collecting and serving food banks, clothing, visiting nursing homes, teaching children Sunday School, sharing her garden, comforting and praying for family, friends and neighbors.  She has left footprints for us to follow on how to be kind, compassionate and to love and serve others.


In Loving Memory
Mary Lee Smith-Brown
April 16, 1928 Canton, Georgia
July 19, 2019 Columbus, Georgia

My Mother's Garden

 

 

In Loving Memory:

Mary Lee (Smith) Brown

April 16, 1928, Canton, Georgia

- July 19, 2019, Columbus, Georgia

Memories Mary Hillhouse Flower Garden

My mother, Mary Hillhouse is turning 90 years old in April.  Within the last 4 years, she has had hip and shoulder surgery and her planting days are gone.  She no longer can work in her yard and tend to her flowers.  Most of them are now gone due to the lack of love and care she showered on them for forty years.  Many of these flowers were from her mother's cuttings Eloise McArthur Hillhouse as well as friends through the years.  I didn't appreciate their splendor and beauty as I should have.  They are now memories of times past.  A time of country flower gardens that southern women like her and her mother and mother's mother generations loved to have in the spring living on the country roads of Cherokee County.  I am grateful I have photographs of those precious flowers that will forever linger in my memory of my mom.

Georgian Country Flowers

 

Each year, I like to post pictures of Mary's flowers.  She is now 87 years old and still tries to nurture and care for flowers that were past down to her from her mother Eloise McArthur.  Some of these plants are over 100 years old.  I love the country charm of the old wooden fence and flowers growing out of concrete blocks.  The bottom picture will someday be a oil painting hanging on my bedroom wall.