Yellow springtime flowers

The sky is blue, the air is warm, and our garden is getting some colour again! Texas doesn't boast the same array of early spring flowers as the UK, but I planted some daffodils in the autumn, and they duly sprouted and produced yellow trumpets to herald the spring. This bed also includes a clump of four-nerve daisies which has done particularly well.

On the fence in our back yard, the unidentified creepers (anyone got any ideas?) nearly froze to death in the Big Snow last year. I had to chop them back severely, but it did them good. This year they are a mass of yellow flowers. The bees and butterflies are having a field day out there.

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Drought

Two days into Stage One water restrictions, and I looked out of the window to see the guy over the road washing his car. Admittedly, the restrictions don't actually forbid you to wash your car. They limit you to using a hand-held bucket (does it count if you put it down on the driveway?) or hand-held hose "for quick rinses". But they are pretty much "if you don't mind" rules at this stage anyway, with holes large enough to lose whole buckets of water through (hand-held or otherwise). For example, we are now limited to watering our lawn twice a week, but this only applies to sprinkler systems. You can still use a hose as much as you like, presumably on the assumption that you will get bored of standing there holding it very quickly. And besides, everything you read about good watering technique says it's better to water thoroughly just once a week. Our garden would think Christmas had come early if it got watered every three days! So hopefully...

Jesus came to earth... to reflect God to us

Do you remember playing with a magnifying glass on a sunny day? That curved piece of glass you held in your hand captured the scattered rays, narrowing them down to a fluttering patch of brightness. And all the light’s power was held in that one small circle, shrinking and shrinking… until finally you were rewarded with a sudden curl of smoke, and a neat charred hole. Imagine, then, that God, seeking to reveal himself on earth, condensed his essential being through some kind of celestial magnifying glass. That wavering point became smaller and smaller, losing none of its power… until it became the exact size of a human baby, growing in a womb. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, says the verse in Colossians, the perfect reflection of God’s glory. This is the first and greatest reason that Jesus came: to show us what God is really like. Yet sometimes, reflected and refracted through 2000 years of history, the image that Jesus shows...

Making a mess

My friend Ellie writes a blog which I now shamelessly crib ideas from, when I am stuck for something new to do with Toby. Some time ago she wrote about a substance with the poetic moniker of cloud dough . It sounded simple to make and fun to play with, so I tucked it away in the back of my mind. The recipe is childishly simple: 8 cups of plain flour, 1 cup of vegetable oil, and mix. It comes out kind of sandy, although softer and more powdery. Now, Ellie has two gorgeous girls. Her blog entries were full of photos of them adding pretty objects and creating cute little landscapes. I, on the other hand, have a full-on hands-on get-stuck-in-as-far-as-possible boy. This is what happens when you let him loose on a scatterable substance. We make it and it all starts well. Notice I have prepared for mess with a large tarpaulin and lack of shorts. A few minutes in, and the mess is spreading up the T-shirt. It's still mostly in the t...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

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