Caffy celebrated a birthday this week. It was two years ago on her birthday that we closed on our house here in the Louisville area. How can it have been two years already? She's about finished with an oil portrait of Jonathan Edwards that she's been working on since last year. She's also sketching the preliminary work on a couple of murals, including one for a model home in Louisville's upcoming "Homearama."

Laurelen begins her summer vacation from school on Saturday, and she's ready. She also has two recitals this weekend—voice and piano. In the former, she sings a duet with Caffy.

Farm & Garden Report

Things are really buzzing with Caffy's three bee hives. What an event when she and friend Donna Hall moved each of the colonies (15,000 bees per colony) from their shipping boxes to their respective hives. I watched. From far away.

It's both a good and a scary thing to get serious about beekeeping right now. On the one hand, there's that mysterious disease you've probably heard about where bees leave the hive and disappear. On the other hand, for that reason there's a great need for new beekeepers whose hives can help replace some of those that have been lost.

It looks like all nine trees—the maples, flowering crabapples, pink dogwoods, and a Kwanzaan cherry—that I planted last year have survived. I was a bit concerned after that long, late stretch of freezing weather a few weeks ago. One of the most disappointing losses from the cold weather was the blooms of the lilac bush. They were just about to fill the air with their fragrance when they were killed by the hard freeze.

The garden has really popped up. Conditions have been right to see noticeable growth in the late afternoon from just that morning. Right now the entire garden seems to be growing almost as fast as kudzu. Hey, wait a minute. Maybe I'd better have a closer look at some of those plants! Caffy claims she's going to can the six rows of tomatoes she's planted. Not all the corn that was put in the ground has decided to sprout. The perimeter of the garden—on three sides—is double-wide rows of purple hull peas.

The flowers will move into high gear soon. Mother's Day and Caffy's birthday (which usually fall within a week of each other) are traditionally big outdoor flower-buying occasions in our household.

As for the birds, it's been a good spring for mockingbirds around here. They've never sounded so alive on a spring morning.

Prayer

Please join us in praying that the Lord would bring lasting fruit from the Family Worship book and CD in the lives of those individuals and churches who use them this Father's Day.

Please pray for an eight-year-old girl named Marielle Nish who has been struggling with the return of an aggressive form of cancer called neuroblastoma. She was first diagnosed with this at age six. Her parents have sought to glorify God at every heart-wrenching step of the way.

Continue to pray for my perseverance and pace in the writing project that must be finished this year.