Good way to start out...

My friend, Cindy, is afraid to start a garden.  First of all, they live in a rental house...can't really tear up the backyard for a garden plot.  Secondly, she told me she's never really planted veggies, but she's been pretty successful with flowers.  I encouraged her to go for it w/ a container garden for veggies.  Here's a great web-site that gives some basic instructions about container gardening.
http://www.gardenguides.com/685-guide-container-gardening.html

Our Brilliant 21 Month Old Boy!

Canon reading Russian

He's brilliant!

Insights from a Squash Vine...

Squash vines are "protectors".  They will hurt you.  There are spiny leaves and stems that make it hard to work around them without gloves on.  I know they're there to protect the plants themselves, but they inadvertently protect the weeds around them, too.  They unknowingly cover and defend the very thing that is set on destroying them. After being pricked a number of times, it would be easy for me to give up and let the weeds take over -- but I can't.  I go back everyday and pull the weeds.  Some days, when I forget my gardening gloves, I come away with tiny stickers in my hands and I have to soak them out with warm water -- but I still go back.  Doesn't the squash vine realize I'm doing this for it's good?  Hmmm...Then it struck me...sometimes I'm just like that squash vine (insert smart comments here...).  Sometimes I'm prickly and spiny.  Especially when it comes to the weeding process.  When God sends others to pull weeds in my garden, I go into protection mode.  And even though I know , unlike the squash vine, that it's good for me, I still seem to protect the "weeds" that want to choke my growth.

Are you like these vines, too?  Do you protect things that will rob you of a great life?  As long as we choose to be prickly when others come to us in love, we will be choked out by the weeds.  But, when we consciously make an effort to be teachable, we can keep being transformed into the image of Christ.  I pray I keep learning from these squash vines.