Spring Ahead? One can only hope. It’s late March in Chicagoland and so much for the old motto that “March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb.” No lamb I know of turns 19 degrees tonight and threatens to snow again mid-week.
Just a little setback, I say, and more like Chicagoland than I’m often willing to admit. In James 5:7 it says, “See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains.” I guess I’m not a farmer and I have a long way to go. I’m getting impatient…which is why I have planted pots. They come inside when it’s cold and travel outside on nice days. It’s a way to enjoy spring even when the March lamb is delayed until April…or even May!
Inside, I’ve planted seeds of my cool season flowers like lobelia, ones which bridge the seasons like alyssum, and ones which seem to take forever to grow to a reasonable size such as impatiens and Brazilian vervain. Some plants I won’t even try to grow from seed and I take cuttings instead from plants which I’ve overwintered: begonias, purple potato vine, ivy geranium, and landscape roses.
My tree rose, carefully wrapped and overwintered in my compost pile, now has been unearthed, potted and is slowly being acclimated to the outdoors from the safety of my garage. I don’t want it to come out of dormancy too quickly, nor do I want to leave it in the compost pile where it may leaf out and get damaged when I unwrapped it. The timing was great! The buds were swelling but did not leaf out. I pruned away any dead stems from the graft union (which on a tree rose is at the top of the standard), potted it with a nice quality potting mix and gave it a small drink of half strength fertilizer with slightly higher Phosphorus and Potassium ratios so that it will help the rose to send out new roots which are more important right now than leaves. By the time the weather improves, roots will be well established and I can feed it with a more balanced N-P-K ratio and get the leafing to be full and beautiful. The last thing I did before bringing it into the garage was to spray it with a systemic all-in-one rose spray to give it an edge against any insects or diseases that may want to interfere with the growth of the plant.
Some of my plants are still hiding in the garage awaiting better weather: a lovely ‘Burgundy Cotton’ Crape Myrtle which I brought back on the airplane from Texas and some ornamental grasses that I use in pots. They are not hardy here, so I consider my garage to be more of a hardiness zone like Arkansas.
Of course, it’s time to plant vegetable seeds now too. I have a variety of heirloom tomatoes that I’ve started from seed. Black Krim and Green Zebra are two varieties that we tried last year for the first time and were definite winners. I am also partial to Sweet Tangerine and Jubilee since their color is spectacular, they are prolific producers, and they have proven to be more disease-resistant than many other varieties. By the time warm weather arrives, these heat-lovers will be a suitable size to plant in my deck boxes.
This week, I’ll also be building a few trellises for my clematis that have outgrown their old ones. I will install them before the clematis start to leaf out and begin vigorous growth very shortly…or so one can hope! Stay tuned because Spring is ahead!
In a day and age when salt is considered to be a food evil second only to saturated fat, we have lost sight of the wonders of salt. There was a time when salt added not only flavor—making things taste good—but also it was a necessary preservative ingredient—making things last.
Have you ever had someone dictate a list of things to you? Perhaps a honey-do list? A grocery list? Maybe things you needed from the hardware store? Just when you think they’re through and you have a nice long list, they say, “Oh, and one more thing.” 
Unlike the United States where you can be a citizen of two countries at the same time and have dual citizenship, heaven doesn’t work that way. While babies born in foreign countries often can have the citizenship of their parents in addition to the place where they were born, heaven is an all or nothing deal: You’re either born into the kingdom of heaven or you’re stuck here on earth. 
As I watched, the cold water—once clear and pure—began to reveal that the coffee beans were leaching coffee into the water. Clean and clear became stained as the coffee coloration arose from the beans and permeated the water. While many would think it was nothing more than “every analogy falls apart when pressed,” the discoloration made me think about the opposite of whatever the teacher’s point was. 
How does Paul say we get the Holy Spirit? By faith in God through the work of the Jesus Christ (as portrayed in the Christian Bible).
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” 2 Corinthians 6:14-16
Big mistake, or so Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10: 14-15: “Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say.” If you’re sensible, you will think about it. You will recognize it and not diminish its insidious pull at your life. You will flee from idolatry knowing that it endangers your soul and your relationship with God.
This is reassuring news. We don’t need to learn from our own mistakes. We can learn from other people’s. Seeing the consequences beforehand, we don’t have to resort to trial and error as a way of moving through the obstacle course of life. We can watch those ahead of us in line.