Today the lettuce began to sprout forth - some romaine, some green leaf, some other assorted wild lettuce mixes.  How very exciting.  If I wasn't scared to lift the lid of the seed starter tray and destroy the wonderful balance of temperature and humidity, I'd snap a quick picture and post it here.  But rest assured I will as soon as I can.

In my garden, I take hope from Jesus' promise to the repentant thief on the cross that he will be with his Lord in Paradise. I know that the sweat of my brow and tears of penance bring Paradise near in my backyard. For a garden is a profound sign and deep symbol of salvation, like none other, precisely because a garden was our first habitation, and God has deemed it to be our final home. Beauty is the aim of life. God imagined it so. God spoke the Word, and his invisible Image of Beauty became a visible garden. "The fertility of the earth is its perfect finishing," writes St. Basil of Caesarea, "growth of all kinds of plants, the up springing of tall trees, both productive and sterile, flowers' sweet scents and fair colours, and all that which... came forth from the earth to beautify her, their universal Mother" (Hexaemeron, homily 2). Beauty will transfigure the chaos and deformity of our wounded world into the peace and harmony of a cosmos that God, from the beginning, proclaims to be good and beautiful.

- Armenian Orthodox theologian Vigen Guroian