first off, I will post pictures when my camera finally works again!
So I have 4 lilac bushes in my front yard. My grandma was so excited when we bought this house, because of the lilac bushes. Well, I hadn't really noticed anything really spectacular about them. They are pretty and green, but that's about it. And they produced tiny dark purple flowers in the early spring. And then...we went to Utah in the spring when all the lilacs were blooming. THEY WERE GORGEOUS!!! They had huge pretty purple blooms and the smell was heavenly. Except they didn't quite look like my lilac bushes. I looked long and hard at the lilac bushes there. Both my uncle and Winslow's had lilac bushes in their yards. Leaves were the same. And there were lilacs all over, some big, some a little less established. So what was the deal? Well I came home determined to find out. I wanted to have my bushes smell and look like these. #1 lilacs need full sun. (3 of mine had been planted in the shade. We cut down the elm tree by them...it's more of a weed anyway and has been causing problems with our water line.) #2 DO NOT CUT LILACS LIKE A HEDGE (for some reason every person here lets their lilacs grow wide and then chops off the tops, just as the previous owner of our home had done, big no no.) #3 Lilacs need to be pruned...properly! (so I set out to get me some good pruning clippers.)
It has taken a lot of work, and I am not all the way finished, but my lilac bushes are starting to look a little more like the beautiful ones in Utah, and pruning them helps the bush to focus on making better and bigger blooms, instead of just more leaves. As I was pruning I began to see a good parable. #1 we need to live in the full light of the gospel. #2 you can't just look around at what every one else is doing, they could be doing it wrong, you have to go to the source. #3 sometimes ib order to bloom fully you have to make drastic changes!!!