When we put our home on the market last year, our realtor suggested adding “a little color” to the front of the house. It was early March, and we agreed. 

The daffodils had already come and gone, the azaleas were still a few weeks off, and the photographer was coming the next day. 

Hoping to woo potential buyers, my husband ventured out and found some spirited snapdragons at Home Depot that seemed up for the task of boosting curb appeal. He bought plenty — more than we normally would  – – and spent hours after work planting them in the rain.

The next morning  after the sun reappeared, we fluffed the pine straw and admired our botanical prowess:  Our 87-year-old home still had its flaws, but our front garden bed was irresistible. 

The following week we experienced a rare, mid-March deep-freeze, when temperatures in Atlanta dropped into the 20s for two horrific nights in a row.

My husband had just flown out of town, and upon hearing the forecast, I knew I needed to take some action. As I watched neighbors stand on ladders, covering tall shrubs in thick plastic, it was clear even to me and my brown thumb, that if the neighbors’ big shrubs were in danger, our delicate snapdragons would not make it through two nights of severe temps.

After a long day of working, parenting, and general juggling, I stood in our front yard in the past-bedtime darkness, considering my dilemma.

Covering large, hearty shrubs with thick plastic, as my neighbor had done, seemed like a pretty easy task.

But how would I cover the delicate, ground-hugging flowers without crushing them?

Trash bags, of course.  

I collected a few from the kitchen and tried to shelter the snapdragons as gingerly as I could. To my discouragement, the wind was whipping trash bags off soon as I could get them down. They didn’t even last a few seconds.

I needed something heavy to secure the bags

…Something I could carry myself

….Something easy to find in the dark, since by this time it was almost midnight. 

Canned goods. 

I ran back to the kitchen, quickly filled my arms with Starkist Tuna and Bush’s Beans, and ran back outside, weighting down each trash bag with my tasty little garden implements. 

As I stepped back and surveyed my black-shrouded and can-laden spectacle, I was pretty sure I had just saved the snapdragons.

Trash bags + tuna = garden victory.

Now all of my husband’s hard work would be preserved by all of my valiant efforts. 

A quick night of sleep passed, followed by a long morning of getting three children up, dressed, and fed.  Somewhere between oatmeal and permission slips, I remembered the snapdragons. 

Pretty pleased with myself for knowing to cover them in the first place, I ran outside to see how the snaps had fared.

Immediately I could see my plan had gone awry.

I was greeted by a maple tree full of blown-away black trash bags, and a front garden bed full of canned tuna, baked beans, and frozen snapdragons.

And although they temporarily  looked beautiful in their little crystallized, upright state, I could tell the snaps were goners.  

I wasn’t wrong.

Despite all of my best efforts, within three days, they were all brown and wilting. As the days passed, they degenerated further.

With our house still on the market, one by one, our valiant pink snapdragons gradually started sinking into the pine straw. Even our second grader  — just a student, not a botanist — commented “Our snap dragons are officially dead.”

At this point, they were doing more cosmetic harm than good. I made a mental note to dig them up and throw them into the backyard as compost.

But a couple of weeks later something mysterious happened.

They stopped dying. 

The brown petals began turning pink again. They were being coaxed back to life by the sun, the rain, and the magic flower dust floats around in April. These forces were completely beyond my control, and they seemed miraculous. Although my best efforts to save my snap dragons failed, they were being saved after all.

I didn’t ask any questions. We were showing our house. We were waiting for offers. We were navigating new jobs. We were transitioning our kids.  We were exhausted and overwhelmed.

I simply accepted this sweet gift of grace during a busy and stressful season as a smile from the Giver.