Weekly Links: Planned Parenthood, Obergefell, earthquakes, and more!

So very, very many links for you this week. (Possibly because I took a week or two off!)

Enjoy the good words of people so much smarter than me.



"After Obergefell": I always find it heartening when smart, godly people give good counsel on what to do (as opposed to the disheartening feeling I get after reading an article that's a mere wringing of the hands):

Churches must take responsibility for marriages and families. The argument that we need to protect marriage for children is true in principle, laughable in practice. In sections of America, marriages aren’t steady enough to protect anyone. The best argument for traditional marriage is a thriving traditional marriage.

"The Really Big One" - Terrifying. (And makes me happy to be a bit east and a bit south of the region they're talking about. But still, as some one close to the Pacific and very sincerely in earthquake country? Terrifying.)

"10 Foods that Regrow in Water Alone" - Here's a break from the doom-and-gloom: things still grow! And better and more easily than you might have guessed!

"The End of Sexual Ethics: Love and the Limits of Reason": charity and logic applied to sexual ethics and identity.  God bless you, Matt Anderson.


"Arms Wide Open":

I am the type who rehearses life. I plan. I practice. I think of every possible thing that could go wrong, and I set aside provisions for them. I am careful and fearful and shy. But my daughter? She is brave.

"Planned Parenthood and the Atrocity of Corpse Selling": This is really horrific.

"I, Racist":

You are “you,” I am “one of them.” 

"How We Do Family Devotions":

I read slowly and expressively with just enough drama to cut through their early-morning fog. I pause to tell my daughter to remove her hands from around her sister’s neck, and keep reading. When I have come to the end of our passage I briefly explain something from the passage (and by “briefly” I mean a minute or less). Sometimes I have to cheat by quickly consulting the study Bible notes so I’ll have something worth saying. Then I try to come up with a question or two I can ask the kids—a question of comprehension or of application. And I explain why calling your brother “a stupid idiot” is inappropriate during a reading of 1 Corinthians 13. And that’s our Bible reading.

"Non-Competing Theories of the Atonement":

As I told my veteran pastor of my plans to do graduate studies in the doctrine of the atonement, a wry smile creased his face as he asked: "So...which theory of the atonement do you believe in?" I responded, "All of them!"

Weekend Links: Getting things done, being blesed, and more!

Some good reading from around the Web for your weekend:

"Face It: Your Decks Will Never Be Cleared":

The reality is: Things never clear up. They don’t even reliably settle down. Your in box is always full. The decks are always crowded. There is always more going on than you want or expect. Nonetheless, you can find ways to put your writing first, and make sure that it gets done. Otherwise, everything but your writing will get done.

"Why I don’t say 'I’m so blessed.'":

. . . God loves you. But I don’t know how, just like I don’t know how or why or how much He loves me. He makes rain fall on the wicked and the just, and woe to the just who think that they deserve the rain.

"Episode 9: Slay Your Dragons Before Breakfast So They Don’t Eat Your Lunch [Podcast]":  I really enjoyed this particular episode of "This is Your Life", on productivity.

"Jennifer Orkin Lewis": I loved this interview with an artist on her habit of sketching with paints for 30 minutes every day. (Hat tip to Melissa Wiley.)

"5 Easy Indoor DIY Succulent Ideas": Maybe it's just because I live in a hot place where succulents grow REALLY well, but I loved this post.

"Four Unexpected Benefits of a Small Church":

When I was in college and attended the big college-town churches, it was very easy to take in a sermon, get the free college kid care package, and book it back to the dorm with no strings attached. This is much harder to do in a small environment. When Isaiah has his vision of the Lord, there are lots of angels around, but Isaiah is the only human witness. When the Lord says, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" there aren't really any other options. I suppose Isaiah could have refused, but doing so would have highlighted his own unwillingness as the excuse—there was no one else to hide behind. Similarly, in a small-church environment, when something needs to be done, it's much harder to trust that someone else must be taking care of it. Often my response to a need must be, "Here I am. Send me." This isn't always my preference, but it is almost always for my good.

patio garden in spring

I'm enjoying our patio garden so much right now. We've been working on gradually adding to it, with an eye to making the view out of our front window a peaceful one. If you can ignore the bright plastic sand toys, I think you can say we've achieved our goal:

The big palm made a huge difference in making the patio feel cool and green. And with the recent rain, our lantana and lavender and geraniums are blooming beautifully:

That lavender is supposedly a plant that should be scantly watered, but it really starts to droop after just a day or two, and looks much happier when its regularly soaked. Look at the dark purple on the side of the blossoms, and those lovely light purple petals on top:

And this lantana is what I used to call "fruit loop flowers":

Other things we have growing - but not yet blooming - on the patio are nasturtiums, irises, a couple more geraniums, another lantana and several varieties of miniature roses. I'm hoping summer will find our patio full of blooms.

And I'm trying to be better about bringing the outdoors in. Here is some of that lavender in a vase above my kitchen sink:

And some lantana in a cloisonné vase in the bathroom:

How are your gardens - patio or yard - doing these days? Is spring coming where you are too?

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

7 Quick Takes

-1-
I do love listening to NPR, biased as they are, but recently I haven’t been able to help but wonder how in the world they’re going to fill their hours of programming once they’re deprived of the time-consuming, mouth-filling phrase “President-elect Barack Obama.” Seriously, if they just cut that phrase out of the last week of programming, they’d only have enough words to fill three days. Well, that phrase coupled with “slobber, slobber, slobber.”

-2-
I have winterized my patio. Here in SoCal, that means I uprooted the basil that finally died (no more fresh basil for a couple of months - yes, we're spoiled here) and replaced it with lantanas and geraniums. My excellent husband also rearranged the stuff on the patio so that we now see green plants out of our living room window rather than grill and pots. Yay! I love the view out of our window now.

-3-
The problem with 11 month old twins is there isn’t an older one to whom you can tell, “no, share with your sister; she’s younger than you, you know.”

It goes like this at our house:
Anna: yay, I’m playing with the phone. This rocks.
Lucy: ooh, phone. –snatch!-
Anna: WAAAAAH, SHE STOLE MY PHOOOOOONE. –snatch!-
Lucy: WAAAAAAAAH, SHE STOLE MY PHOOOOOOONE. –snatch!-
Anna: WAAAAAAAAH, SHE STOLE MY PHOOOOOONE!, etc.

-4-
Making a craft tutorial is hard! I never thought it wasn’t, but now that I’m actually working on one myself, I’m finding I have scads more admiration for the folks who’ve made the ones I’ve used in the past. It takes awhile to take all the pictures, just to start.

Also, I have an admiration for other folks’ photography abilities. And the quality of their camaras!

-5-
It is very hard to be in RSV quarantine when your church is in the middle of deciding what it’s going to do about being in the Episcopal Church. Our church is having a meeting this Sunday that’s going to be hours and hours long, and I can’t go. (The twins nurse about every two hours, and our church is half an hour away, which means I could be there for an hour, tops, as the twins can’t be out in crowds this winter.)

On the other hand, I get a lot of practice praying and trusting God, since I can’t do much about the situation myself!

-6-
You know the previous entry? Well, suffice it to say, that these days, I’m really, really, really wishing I could convert to Catholicism.

(I can’t in good conscience, for various theological reasons, but to my Roman Catholic readers – and Eastern Orthodox - boy I envy you both your persistent orthodoxy and your unity!)

-7-
It sounds like we might still be able to buy used kids’ clothes at thrift stores – the CPSC has further clarified the lead law going into effect in February. It still leaves small artisans in the cold, but it’s a start!

Thanks to Jen for hosting the Quick Takes - visit her site for more!

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

snapdragons inside and out

I'm getting used to living in a condo, to not having a yard. But even without a yard, I couldn't not have a garden. The above picture is a shot of some of the plants I have on our patio wall. They're snapdragons.

I saw some last fall at a botanical garden, and fell in love. It was too late to grow them then, so I'm growing them now. They're lovely, with their soft pinks and architectural fall of blossoms.

Though I can't afford the huge bouquets you see in any home and garden magazine (ever spot a photo shoot without flowers?), I love having little bud vases here and there in my home. Right now I only have two out, one in the bathroom and one on the bar above my kitchen sink.

But I smile whenever I see them. There is something about looking, just for a few seconds in between rinsing dishes or washing my hands, at a graceful blossom that softens my mood. I think it even helps remind me to speak more gently to my children. I'm amazed, over and over, at how I'm influenced by my surroundings. As they say, "Geography is the mother of strategy." It's true in the home as well as the battlefield.

Forgive the poor photo, but the above are the zinnias growing in my kitchen window sill. They aren't as graceful as the snapdragons, but they're cheery and bright, and one more step to making our new condo feel like home.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

in the garden

Well, my sunflowers (yet without flowers) are touching the patio roof, but what I'm really excited is what's in that picture above: beans and tomatoes. I steamed those beans, tossed them with a little butter and was in culinary heaven. Tender and meaty and just perfect. And tomatoes aren't tomatoes unless you picked them two minutes ago. Mmmmm, summer.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

a surprise of pomegranates

It's surprising what comes up when you water your lawn.

I've got two kids, but I still haven't been an adult all that long, and there's a lot I'm still learning. Especially about responsibility. Especially, especially about responsibilities I don't like.

For instance: it is my responsibility to water my lawn. Well, my landlord's lawn; we're renters. Now, the more I learn about SoCal, the more convinced I am that most front lawns (which are seen but not played on) are a waste of water. If it was my house, I'd pull up all the grass and plant a big, sunny-happy herb garden. I'd keep the back lawn, 'cause the kids like it. But the front? Again: it's a waste of good water.

But it's still my responsibility to water it. It's not my house, so it's not my choice. And I have been terrible about watering it. But I've been working on doing so regularly for the last month or so, and it's turning respectably green.

The sprinkler doesn't just water the lawn though, it waters the front flower beds (which were inhabited by a glorious sago palm, but not much else), and they've started sprouting all kinds of interesting vegetation, sprung from who knows where.
I am amazed at how long some plants can stay dormant, but still lively enough to spring up once the water returns.

And one thing springing up were a couple of busy-looking maybe-trees with orange flowers. Kinda pretty, and I'd contemplated bring the flowers inside to occupy a vase or two. But yesterday my dad came over, and with his visit, all my desire to gather the pretty orange flowers fled.

"Those? Those are pomegranates," he said, "See? You've got fruit forming already."

Pomegranates! It my yard! Ya-HUM. Yum.

It's amazing what comes up when you water.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

flower pressing

I've fallen so severely in love with gardening, that I'm taking up gardening-related crafts, heaven help me!

Here's the first:



I have a picture made of pressed flowers on my bathroom wall, and it's so pretty. (I found it at a thrift shop.) There are so many pretty flowers in my garden right now, that I want to see if I can duplicate the effect.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

in the garden

Here's a photo blog for you folks, of recent developments in the garden.

Photo courtesy of my husband. These are the zinnias growing in our wading pool garden.

Earthmovers'R'Us. Like our new watermelon hills? I'm hoping they work!

When my morning glories died (they can be perinneal here), I was heart-broken. But I got over it, and planted nasturtiums in their place. But among the circular nasturtium leaves I kept spotting other leaves that were suspiciously heart-shaped. And this morning, I discovered the joyous truth: my morning glories had reseeded themselves. (This picture does an awful job of conveying the blue-purple glory of this flower, sorry.)

Bringing the outdoors in, all the way to my kitchen table: I never knew that I loved flowers, and I think it was because cut flowers are so expensive, I couldn't let myself love them. But growing them yourself makes it much more reasonable, and now I'm finding out exactly what everyone's been talking about all these years. Flowers really are pretty. Like: really, really pretty. :D

Ever wonder what "cornflower blue" looks like?

Since taking this picture this morning, I've gone out and tied the leaves up around these cauliflower curds. But they're actually producing! (On a side note, does anyone know if cauliflower leaves are edible? Because they sure have a lot of them.)

I love this rose bush. It was one of the first plants my husband and I bought together, and we bought it for the lovely deep red color. It is constantly afflicted by wilt, but that never seems to keep it from just spilling over with jewel-like blooms every spring. Isn't it gorgeous?

Happy Monday, folks!

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Frugal Friday: buying discounted plants

Maybe they don't do it everywhere, but at the Lowe's near my house, if you go all the way to the back (or, sometimes, tucked just to the right of the entrance at the front) of the garden section, you'll find a big moveable shelf full of discounted plants. They're usually more than half off - often $2 for a nice, mature plant.

Sometimes, these plants are pretty much done for the world. But, often, the only thing wrong with them is that they are done flowering. They're not at the height of prettiness anymore, and so Lowe's can't sell them for full price.

I love, love, love, looking through this shelf. I've found verbena, flowering sage (salvia), ivy and more.

The trick to buying discounted plants, at Lowe's or wherever they sell them in your area, I've found, is to buy perennials and not annuals. The annuals are probably pretty much done (though, if you're a greener thumb than me, maybe you can coax them into blossoming again before the season is over). But the perennials, of course, you can deadhead, feed, water, and enjoy for years. I have a pot of red, white and purple verbena that went on sale after the fourth of July that's flowering beautifully and abundantly.


The other fun thing you can sometimes find there are the gift plants that have started to go bad. You know, the ones that have been planted to look extremely beautiful for a week or two, but then crowd themselves out because they've been planted too closely in too small a pot. I got a three pot gift package of ivy that had about nine little ivy plants in each four inch pot! No wonder it was dying! But take it home, separate the plants, repot them - and, wow, that's a lot of ivy for $3.


Anyway, hopefully you can find a store nearby with a similar, possibility-laden shelf!



peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

in the garden

There are cucumber seeds in the dirt! I just couldn't bring myself to pay $3 for a cucumber plant when I could pay less than $2 for a whole packet of seeds. Even though the cucumber plant in question was one of those yummy lemon cucumbers.

I've got tiny thyme seedlings and tiny forget-me-not seedlings coming up! (Does anyone else ever look at all those flats of bright, blossoming annuals at the home improvement stores and think, "Yeah, but if you buy those, you miss all the fun!" I mean, they're beautiful plants, but you didn't get to watch them grow, to peek every morning to see if they were poking their little green heads out of the dirt, to peek again to see if there were any blossoms and if maybe, maybe, maybe today was the day those blossoms were going to open!)

I found some cool new plants at a discount, including a poisonous one that is NOT going to stay in the backyard where I put it because, well, it's poisonous, and my kids have a habit of sticking things in their mouths. Hooray for the ability to search the web for plant info! (It's a Natal Plum. Apparently the fruit is edible but the rest of it, including the seeds inside the fruit, is not.)

The sunflowers at the front of the house, which are not getting enough sun, are terribly spindly-lookin'. The ones at the back, which are getting enough sun, are looking hardier, but a little bug-eaten.

The small green tomatoes on my Early Girls are getting less and less small. Mmmm, I can almost taste them now. I think tomatoes you grow yourself are as good as apples when it comes to snacking.

My neighbor's loquat tree has very graciously draped itself across our back fence, and we're enjoying the fruits of its labors. Yum.


I wouldn't have guessed a year ago that I'd ever enjoy gardening this much. I feel more greenhorn than greenthumb, because I just don't know that much about plants yet, but in some ways, it's a glorious hobby in which to be an amateur. There're so many plants that are forgiving of mistakes, and just grow their hearts out no matter what you do to them. And they're so pretty and fragrant and heart-lifting.

Seriously, there is something world-resettingly right about gardening. I think it's 'cause we were made to be in gardens, from the very beginning. This daughter of Eve is content to go back to that life, at least sometimes.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

WFMW: Miracle-Gro

Okay, I don't mean to sound like a corporate shill here (and I'm not - I'm not connected in any way with the company), but man! that stuff works!

I have an ivy plant that I grew from my wedding bouquet. My sister has a similar one, grown from her wedding bouquet. We both got the cuttings for our bouquets from plants my mom grew from the ivy from her bouquet.

While I did manage to keep my plant alive for the first year and a half of our marriage, I didn't manage to do much more than that. So when I went over to my sister's house, and saw the big, beautiful plant her cutting had grown into, I was shocked. Especially since she got marriage a year after I did, and so my plant had been growing a lot longer than hers.

"How did you get it so big?" I asked.

My sister gave me that "you're a bit of a weirdo, Jess" look and said, "Um, I fed it?"

Ah.

And that was the start of my love affair with Miracle-Gro. Just the nice, blue powder form at first. I put a scoop in the bottom of my watering can every week, and, lo-and-behold, my ivy plant grew. It's huge now.

Then I discovered that Miracle-Gro makes potting soil. Folks, they're not kidding about bigger and better plants. The comparison of the tomatoes I grow in their potting soil to the ones I grow in my garden soil? Thick, dark green stalks next to puny, pale ones. ('course, my garden soil's pretty sad stuff . . . I'm working on it.)

So, someday, I want to be a super-cool, composting, organic-soil-amendment making greenthumb. But till then? Miracle-Gro: works for me!


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

p.s. the picture is of my wading pool garden as of yesterday (Miracle-Gro soil, y'see). As you can see, the cosmos are blooming. As you probably can't, the zinnias are about to (there are buds! yay!). The bachelor's buttons, to my sorrow, don't seem to have any plans on flowering in the near future.

Below is a picture of the cosmos from the wading pool garden (along with some flowers from my side yard) doing their duty on our kitchen table. Food tastes better with eye candy like that, no?

in the garden

My husband took the weedwhacker to our backyard (our grass tends to grow into tall weediness along the edges of our yard) and, in addition, removed a couple of spider-inhabited, falling-apart old window boxes that had been sitting against a wall, and the resulting, clean-edged space inspired me.

I got out all the seed packages I had. Feeling a bit like I was in the parable of the Sower and the Seed, I sprinkled forget-me-nots that we got as wedding favors (hi, Sarah!) up in the narrow back terrace that's filled with dirt and concrete chunks. Maybe they'll be okay with the weird soil. I put more in our front flowerbeds, to grow up between the sunflowers. And the last in an indoor pot that already holds a tall plant.

I took that tall plant and tied it up with string so that it can grow up the bare side of my upper kitchen cabinets, green leaves against white paint.

I took the same ball of string, and tied up the jasmine plant outside our bedroom window. It's heavy with white buds, just beginning to break into blooms, and I want to coax it up the trellis covering our window, so we can breathe in its scent on the night air.

I weeded around the tomato plants that I couldn't get to before my husband moved the old window boxes. I planted thyme seeds in a pot. I put some geranium cuttings from our giant side yard plant in rooting hormones, then in pots, and covered them with a plastic bag to keep them moist while they (I hope!) root.

Laughing at myself, I took tiny bites out of my basil seedlings. I'd planted them from a seed packet that included seven varieties of basil, and I wanted to end up with one plant of each variety. I'm not sure I suceeded. How exactly do you tell lemon basil from cinnamon basil? At least the anise-flavored basil was obvious. (As was the purple ruffled variety. Did you know you can use it in flower arrangements? I didn't either!) I moved some of the seedlings to pots, stuck another few in the herb garden, and put a few between the vegetables. I wonder which will take.

I have two glasses of tap water on my desk. I'm going to let them sit overnight so that the chlorine evaporates, and then I'm going to put ivy cuttings in them. I have a big ivy plant I grew from cuttings from my wedding bouquet, and those cuttings came from a plant grown from cuttings from my mother's wedding bouquet. My plant is healthy enough now that I want to propagate it - I want lots of plants from it, so that at least one is around long enough that my daughter can use cuttings from it in her wedding, if she wants to. So, we'll see if I can get it to root. It takes awhile, I'm told. (Anyone know if you can use powdered rooting hormone for water-rooting, or is it only to be used with a potting medium?)

I dug up a square of grass next to my veggie garden. There was old, rotting wood just under the grass, and it was full of spiders, who weren't happy at being disturbed. They skittered up the wall in protest. But I dug it up anyway, turned it over, pulled out the most obvious grass roots, and planted sunflowers along the back, thyme around the other three sides, and butternut squash in the middle. I'll have to weed it furiously for awhile, but hopefully soon the squash will overshadow the weeds, and that will be the end of them. It'll probably overshadow the thyme too, but oh well, it'll be nice for awhile.

I found some old anenome seeds (bulbs?) that I'd gotten once upon a time, and planted them behind my nasturtiums, and a few between some sunflower seedlings near the patio. I don't know if they'll come up, but I figured I'd give them a chance.

Pretty haphazard gardening, but I figure, if I have the seeds, I'll plant them. I'm not a good enough gardener yet to know exactly what I ought to do with what I have. And then, sometimes, I'm just not a big enough gardener to do the right thing with every seed. Some of the thyme went where it should: in a pot, in good soil. But I had leftover seeds. So I put them where they're chances aren't so great. But, hey, better than no chance at all, right?

I used to save unplanted seed. But now I figure I'll just plant it. It kind of gives some suspense to the whole gardening process. I bet some plant, some time in the next few months, will surprise me. :)

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Frugal Friday: free flowers

My front flower bed has about six lovely calla lily plants growing in it. And I didn't pay a dime for them. What's my secret? Dividing perennials.

My weird, boggy side yard looked like just a weedy jungle when we moved into this house. Nobody goes back there, and so it took me some months to realize that some of the weedy-looking things were actually valuable plants. Among them: roses, irises and calla lilies. The true nature of these plants dawned on me when they started blooming in the spring.

The problem? Like I said, no one sees my side yard. It's just a small, awkward walk-through on the side of the house, with barely any windows looking out on it. In other words, those gorgeous flowers were going completely unappreciated. So, I moved them.

Using methods similar to those described here, I dug up around the calla lilies, and found that they had indeed spread their bulbs (rhizomes?) underground. I dug up the likeliest looking ones (while leaving the mother plant where it was) and planted them in my front flower beds.

Now the plant that no one appreciated is being seen and enjoyed every time we go through our front door. Dividing perennials = free, frugal beauty.


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

WFMW: outside flip-flops

Okay, this is one of those "oh-I'm-sure-everyone-already-knows-this" tips, but it really works for me!

Living in SoCal (and being married to my Indonesia guy, from whom I really picked up the habit), I go barefoot around the house most of the time (take that, Flylady!). That means that if I go outside and water the plants, I get my feet all goopy.

My solution? A pair of old flip-flops right outside my front door. I slip into them as I walk out, tromp all through the garden, and then slip out of them when I'm ready to go back inside. Those shoes never see the inside of the house, and my feet never see the mucky soil of the garden. Those flip-flops just stay outside in all their glorious muddiness. And by the time I'm ready to go outside again, the mud on the soles has dried, and can be easily sloughed off.

Keeping my bare feet nice and clean? Works for me!


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

p.s. I don't hate Flylady. I love how her ideas about timers. But the shoe thing? Ha!

Gardening and the City

It seems I'm reading and hearing a lot these days about wanting to move out of the city and into the country, away from the people and into the wilderness, off the grid and away from the madding crowds.

I understand the urge, at least, I think I do. Everyone needs to be in the desert once in awhile. Needs to hear nothing but wind, see nothing but sand, feel nothing but the hot air that comes not off the baking concrete, but off the baking rock.

But I don't understand wanting to live there permanantly, not really, even if your particular desert is green as Oregon, or pretty as Colorado.

The past month has been a month of gardening for me. Every time I come inside after watering, weeding, digging and planting, I feel refreshed. I feel like the world is bigger and brighter and better than I thought it was before I went out and got my hands dirty. And it strikes me that this is why I like the city: I like the city because it is a place of gardens. Yes, there's too much concrete and smog, too much trash and too much suffering, too much crowding and too much crime. But it's also a setting for thousands of sunken green jewels, thousands of gardens.

From the carefully planted lawns surrounded by sculptured rocks, to the vast parks full of trees and ponds, to the college arboretums to the professional, botanical gardens, to the nurserys full of saplings and fountains, to the islands of carefully-tended roses in front of the gas stations, everywhere I go in the city I seem to run into slices of nature, carefully tended and grown into a beauty and orderliness that's never matched in the country.

Okay, that's not true. I know it. There are gorgeous gardens in the country, and there are farms that have an orderliness and beauty all their own, and the truth is that the country is almost as much a product of man's cultivation as the city is. But my point is that the city is not a complete abomination. If you open your eyes, what you see, over and over again, is man's attempt to live up to his Edenic duties. I like it here.


Some of my favorite bloggers disagree with me. And, truthfully? I like reading how God's called them to the country, and hearing about their adventures there. But me? Give me a garden in a city. At least for now, that makes me very happy.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

WFMW: plant stand

See what my clever husband made for me?

Most of those plants are perennials I've nursed through the winter, that are just now starting to bloom again. My problem was that they were hard to see; none of them (except the nutty verbena on the right) are very tall, so when I looked out my windows they were largely invisible. Now that they're flowering again, I really wanted to be able to see them.

So Adam took a couple cinder blocks and a couple boards ("I hope you appreciate that I'm giving up good scrap lumber for you." "Oh! Do you need it for something?" A grin and: "No, it's just always nice to have good scrap lumber around." "Oh! Then I'll appreciate it!") and made me a plant stand! Easy as laying boards across cinder blocks (like you would to build a bookcase) and it doesn't matter how it looks, because the plants will draw the eye away from it nicely.

So now I look out my window and think I'm seeing something from Better Homes and Gardens. A beautiful display of plants, the plants I've been eagerly checking in the morning for new bud clusters - now I'll actually see them bloom! Works for me!


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

p.s. Also working for me this week? My new blog: From Print to Plate. I'm enjoying writing about the new recipes I try. Check it out!

Eve

The weather is getting warmer where I live, and today found me out in the garden after church. There were peas to pick, weeds to pull, lettuce to transplant (it was getting crowded) and early tomatoes to plant.

I'm a bad gardener in the winter months. My plants are lucky if they get watered once a week, and to be honest, only the hearty ones pull through. But I've been better about it during the past few weeks, and today I had the joy of finding four rosebuds ready to burst on the old, gnarly rose bush in my weedy side yard. There'll be a bouquet of cut roses in my kitchen by Wednesday, I predict. And the calla lily patch - also a stalwart survivor of the weedy east side of the house - is resurrecting itself. Just in time for Lent, funnily enough.

I like spring. But there's something odd about living in this Mediterenean climate, where everything starts blooming and blossoming as we head into the Great Fast. In other parts of the world, I think, the flowers come out for Easter.

I can't pull any great meaning from my garden's odd sense of timing. But I think gardening will be a big part of my Lenten experience this year. We moved into this rental house two years ago, and each spring, I get a bit better at cultivating the plants in the yard. I'm not anywhere close to a good gardener yet, but more fresh herbs show up in my cooking, more flowers in my house, and more veggies in my pot as the years go by.

Surely that's some sort of metaphor for the Christian life.

I'll think about it more this Lent, as I weed, water and plant. And I'll let you know if I learn anything.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

p.s. How are your gardens growing, out there in Bloggityville?