Garden update
My daffodils are blooming. Actually they were forced. That is, on Tuesday afternoon when I went out to the front garden, almost all my daffodil buds had been plucked from their bed under the peach tree and laid neatly upon the retaining wall. I put them in a glass of water and set it on the windowsill above my kitchen sink. Most of them are blooming now, and I hope that the four or five that are left in the garden will be blooming in the next few days. The muscari leaves are out, but I don't see any bloom stalks coming up yet.

The buds on the peach tree are swelling. I just planted it last fall - wonder how soon to expect fruit? In the same garden with the peach tree and the bulbs, resides the only blueberry that survived the summer. I'm going to plant two more this spring and that's it! I hope they live!

If I get as many tomatoes this year as I did last, I'm going to take some of them to the farmer's market once a week and sell them. A couple of years ago, Organic Gardening said that a nice way to make more sales at a farmer's market is to sell boquets, so this year I've started some seeds that (if I don't manage to kill them!) will grow into cutting flowers: delphiniums, cornflower, yarrow, carnations, wall flower, and daisies. Seeds are so cheap that I can sell boquets for a dollar or two and make almost all profit.

In the houseplant department, my Christmas Lily finally decided to bloom. Mike gave it to me Christmas 2001 and I cared for it according to directions, watering it until the foliage died down then storing it in the dark for several weeks before bringing it out in early November 2002, but that year it didn't bloom. Lots of leaves, but no blooms. So I faithfully cared for it again the rest of that season, watering it until the foliage died down et cetera, but it wasn't ready to go into the dark until the end of October, so it's only just now blooming. Strange plant. I suppose next year, if it blooms, it'll be an Easter Lily!

After killing two ficus trees, I finally figured out what I was doing wrong - I was keeping them too wet. As far as I can remember that is the only plant I've ever killed with kindness. Usually they die from neglect. :-( Well, the current victim is a month old and is putting out lots of baby leaves, so I guess it's happy. Oh, one other thing that may have made some difference. Lilian loves playing in the ficus's dirt, and I have never been able to train her to stop doing it, so I put a layer of Spanish moss on top of the dirt, and Lilian doesn't like it, so this one has had the pleasure of undisturbed roots. Of course, the week before I put the moss on it, John sprayed the dirt with Lysol All Purpose Orange Breeze cleaner. I scraped off the top layer of dirt and added a fresh layer, and it doesn't seem to have bothered the tree.

Hmm. Maybe when I plant my blueberries I should have John spray them with Lysol. ;-D

Stuff seen on the blogs today.

Anne shares some funny pictures.

Alastair has a high view of communion.

"Who needs television when you have a 2 year old?"

It's always fun to be quoted. (See the Feb 27 post - I can't get the permalink to work!)

Don't you love the sound of hot coffee pouring into a mug? Its cadence is unlike any other sound I can think of.

There really are comments on the threads below - for some reason when I changed to the new template it started saying "0 comments" and I can't figure out how I've managed to mess up a simple cut and paste job!!

By precepts taught of ages past,
Now let us keep again the fast,
Which, year by year, in order meet
Of forty days is made complete.

The law and seers that were of old
In divers ways this Lent foretold,
Which Christ Himself, the Lord and Guide
Of every season, sanctified.

More sparing therefore let us make
The words we speak, the food we take,
Deny ourselves in mirth and sleep,
In stricter watch our senses keep.

In prayer together let us fall,
And cry for mercy, one and all;
And weep before the Judge, and say,
O turn from us Thy wrath away.

Thy grace have we offended sore
By sins, O God, which we deplore;
Pour down upon us from above
The riches of Thy pardoning love.

Remember, Lord, though frail we be,
That yet Thine handiwork are we:
Nor let the honor of Thy Name
Be by another put to shame.

Forgive the ill that we have wrought,
Increase the good that we have sought;
That we at length, our wanderings o’er,
May please Thee now and evermore.

Blest Three in One, and One in Three,
Almighty God, we pray to Thee,
That Thou wouldst now vouchsafe to bless
Our fast with fruits of righteousness.

Words: Unknown author, 11th Century (Ex more docti mystico); translated from Latin to English by John M. Neale.
Music can be found at CyberHymnal.

An honest question
This is something that I've been wondering about for a couple of years, but I've never seen it addressed in a way that answered my questions.

I know a family that used to hold to covenant theology, but the husband became convinced that CT cannot be true because it is inconsistent. He saw that people who hold to CT want the blessings of the Old Covenant, but not the curses, but, he said, if the New Covenant is an extension of, or fulfillment of the Old, then you cannot have a covenant with blessings but not curses. In the end after much study, he decided that the New Covenant must something completely separate from the Old and he and his family became dispensational. (I hope I've been clear in summing up his position!)

So my question is, did he have a fair and accurate view of Covenant Theology? Does the New Covenant have only blessings and no curses?

Spring is coming!
It's chilly this morning and cloudy because we had a thunderstorm last night, but the air is filled with birdsong. My daffodils and muscari are coming up and I had planned on waiting until they bloomed to change my template, but for the first time this year I saw a cardinal and his mate digging around in my compost looking for building supplies, so I decided to go ahead and celebrate the coming of spring!

In an email, I asked Carmon, What if someone is a kind of Prairie Muffin wannabe? Can she post the Official Prairie Muffin badge anyway, or is there a sort of aspiring-to-PM-status suburban muffin kind of category? and she very graciously said that I may, so I have! :-D

In lieu of making up something to blog about I'm reposting a comment I made to The Dane's blog wherein he questions the teaching that a woman ought to remain under her father's authority until she marries.

Seth, I don't think this is an issue that can be decided in a hard and fast way, and there's no chapter and verse to reference on either side of the discussion.

When the Bible presents something as being "normal," i.e. the expected family situations of women, I think that the burden of proof rests on the person who thinks there should be discontinuity between the norm in the Bible and our practice.

I can't think of any Biblical reason why we should view an unmarried woman living out from under her father's authority as a positive moral good and something to be sought after. The baseline assumption in Scripture is just that normally, a woman lives under her father's or brother's authority until she marries. There are exceptions, like Zelophehad's orphaned daughters who had no brother, and of course Dorcas and Lydia, whose situations are not explained.

I don't think we should be too quick to dismiss this kind of thing as being merely cultural. In Christian society until relatively recently, women were expected to obey their fathers until they married – even middle-aged women and even when the father was a tyrant (except, or course if he commanded her to break God's law). The fact that it's a fairly modern innovation and coincides with the woman's suffrage and feminist movements makes it highly suspicious.

The main difficulty with your examples is that in each them the father is being somewhat unreasonable – he's treating a grown woman as though she were still a child. It was extremely trying to me when at the age of 19 I wanted to attend a Christian college, and my parents forbade it – for idealogical, not financial reasons. I was not glad when at the age of 20 I wanted to join a different church, and my mother told me she believed it was God's will that I not do so. By the age of 21, when my husband first asked my father for permission to marry me and was told "No," I was a little better at waiting on the Lord. Each of these circumstances was an opportunity for me to submit myself to God and to trust in his sovereign care of me, and he used them for my sanctification and for his glory.

You have to admit that in modern American culture, even within Christian circles, we prize independence, and we especially don't like it when some people, unmarried men for instance, have certain privileges that certain other people – unmarried women – don't have.

For Theognome who says he made these quizzes just for me, and then was sad because I neglected to take them right away. ;-)


You are the Colossus of Rhodes!

Detail, detail, detail! Any job worth doing is
worth doing correctly and accurately. Like the
Colossus of Rhodes, you will seek the most
efficient and logical way of accomplishing a
task. Never one to rush decisions, you take
into account all available information before
choosing a path. Neat, tidy and organized, you
would rather not lead a group but rather stand
alone. Your downfall is often getting bogged
down in the details.


What Wonder of the Ancient World are you?
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Which Old Testament Character are you?
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I think the results are consistent. The "Colossus" one says I'd "rather not lead a group but rather stand alone," which is true, and Moses didn't particualarly want to be Israel's leader either. :-D