Dwarf hydrangea – what a great idea! My son and daughter-in-law just bought a house in Denver, and I’m flying out in August to help them finish settling in. I’d love to plant a perennial garden for them as a housewarming gift, and you reminded me to look at whether hydrangeas will grow in Colorado.

As for the vaccination thing, I’ve been saying the exact same thing. Is autism so anathema to people that they are willing to risk death? The autistic students I teach are so creative and such outside-the-box thinkers that the world would be a poorer place without them. They add so much to the blessed diversity of humanity.

Well said.

I know the whole vaccine thing is deadly serious, but your last sentence is so perfectly to the point it made me laugh. And the hydrangea is lovely!

and it is the success of our generation that allows these “creative thinkers” to go about their business. It isn’t just the autism issue – although you have made an absolutely brilliant point that I will steal – it is the belief that disease are natural and not risky.

Hello? Foxglove is natural, but we don’t let our children eat it. Poison Ivy is natural, but we don’t let our children play in it. For that matter, Uranium and Lead are natural, but certainly not good for small growing people.

And it is these same people who would, in a heart beat, accept antibiotics if they or their child have a major infection. Or refuse to let me send peanut butter cookies to school for fear of risking “their child.” But apparently, it is alright for them to risk the rest of us.

It is my belief that children with autism, or any other condition many consider an imperfection, are seen in the eyes of our Heavenly Father as perfect. It is we humans who label them. Like many I would be ecstatic if no child had the challenges of the many conditions that exist. I’d be equally ecstatic if humans saw these conditions as only a challenge and not an imperfection. After all, we are all imperfect.