*tree!*

[Genesis 2: 1-3]
And God takes a break. Since I am coming up on the next school year, I am in the process of making myself take fewer breaks, so this is not a terribly urgent passage for me. But, it's worth dwelling on, lest in my attempts to be more productive I end up burning myself out. There really does need to be a day a week where you can just recharge. It doesn't need to be Sunday, and it doesn't even need to be the same day every week, but make sure you've got time to calm down.

[2:4-6]
If taken literally, this is an interesting passage that leads to the Canopy theory in Creationist views, but, like I said, I'm not getting into that.
What is interesting is that God used this mist to take care of things until He made man to take care of it. So it seems that once God made people, He stopped doing the mist thing because it was now man's job to take care of stuff, and if man screwed it up, then it screwed up.
We often ask why God allows certain things to happen. In some cases, it may just be that we have a responsibility that we are not fulfilling. God didn't "protect you" from Diabetes because you eat 3000 calories a day. God isn't providing you work because you're a lazy good-for-nothing who can't be bothered to write a cover letter or format a resume properly. God doesn't bring the mist to take care of stuff when He's told you to take care of it.

[2:7]
Man was created uniquely to everything else. For every other aspect of Creation, God just spoke and they happened. For man, He got His hands dirty. He used the dirt in the ground to form the body, and then breathed life into him. This breath gave man his soul, and created the two-part nature of body and soul that no other creature shares. God let everything else generate algorithmically, but sculpted man by hand.
As I said before, humanity is not a shameful species; it is the highest species on Earth. God breathed a part of His own nature into us and gave us the capacity for true relationships, for love, and for freedom of will.

[2:8-15]
So God planted the Garden of Eden and it's described as a pretty swanky place. It has gold, onyx, and...bdellium (which is apparently a tree resin that smells nice.) It's at this point that God stops the mist and tells Adam that it's his job to take care of this place. The dominion mandate is in effect, and God is sitting back and waiting to see what Adam will discover first. God knows every aspect of every material in this creation and knows what can be done with it. In all of the stuff in the ground, God knows about the potential for things like paper, rope, concrete, enchilladas, and Pokemon cards. God knows there is water on Mars and is giddily awaiting for man to start coming up with rocket propulsion. Like a father who has just built his son a new jungle gym, He just wants to see Adam start figuring everything out.
There's one or two ground rules though.

[2: 16-17]
There's that one tree you need to stay away from. Other than that, go nuts.
There's always discussion over why God even bothered. Why put the one thing they're not supposed to do smack in the middle of the Garden where they can see it? Why not put it on the other side of the world in a cave somewhere if He had to make it all?
There's lots of theories about it, but I hold to two. One is that part of a satisfying relationship is that they are in it voluntarily. If your friends had no choice but to be your friends, the relationship would not be terribly fulfilling.If there's not an out, it's not impressive when people stay in. In order for God to claim that He was in true relationship with humanity, He had to provide them a way to get out of relationship with Him. Even in Heaven He had apparently established the ruleset and natures that allowed Satan to fall, because even the worship of the angels would not satisfy Him if they did not have the choice of packing their bags and heading out.
Secondly, in discussing this concept, we often forget that later the Bible tells us that redemption through Jesus was the plan from the beginning. As God was formulating the plan for this "humanity" project, He knew that the Fall and the Redemption was the best way to go. Any plan that involved giving humanity free will inevitably led to our falling away en masse. Thus the only workable plan was to let that fall happen, and redeem us through Jesus' sacrifice. If God had put the tree in a cave on the other side of the world, we would have found it eventually and then sinned. If it hadn't been a tree, we would have broken whatever rule God did set up because that is the nature of free will. So best to put it where we can see it and get the thing over with so we can do the redemption as fast as possible.
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I may come back and do more later, but I have to go for now. Good times.