Answering some questions

Thank you for your kind comments about our deck.  It was one of the things about our house that I fell in love with when our Realtor showed it to us.  The couple who lived here before us both had large extended families and this house is rather small so they built a big deck and replaced the sliding glass doors with French doors... lovely!

The two smaller tables are there quite by accident.  I wanted a large picnic table when we moved here but they were just too expensive.  Then Stephanie bought one of the small table sets when they first visited and we bought the other small table set later.

As it turns out, they have been very easy to work with, much better than a picnic table would have been.  God's provision was better all along.  ;)

While land is no longer what I would consider cheap (as it once was), it is still reasonable compared to other parts of the country... thus the big yard.  The above two pictures show the view from our front porch... and people wonder why I have a Big Foot fetish (even though I am assured there are no Big Feet around here except Victoria's).

Remember my winter view?  There really is a barn across the county road!

Now, about other comments:

Thank you so much to everyone who orders through the Amazon widget (either mine or another blog friend since I do have dear friends who also have a widget).  I was able to get a birthday gift for Faith (DVD) and a belated birthday gift for Anna (Pat the Bunny) this month.  Sometimes I use it to build my homemaking library and other times for family gifts.  Thank you!!!

I forgot to say that the Possum Pie recipe calls for chopped pecans and pecan halves but I almost always use only the chopped or leave them out if I don't have them (nuts are getting so expensive).  I have also used Cool Whip instead of real whipped cream if I am in a hurry.

I plant bush beans by seed all summer, until I have used the entire package of seeds.  I read in one of my gardening books that the writer liked to sow seeds for bush beans every two weeks through the summer.  I planted a few more seeds about two weeks after the initial planting. 

The "new" raised bed with the Early Girl tomato plant, green beans, and one pathetic green pepper plant (it did not like all the rain)

Then I planted a few seeds in the new raised bed my husband built in June (along with an Early Girl tomato plant which only takes about  50 days to harvest). 

Today I hoed the area where the cabbage was and will plant green beans there within the next couple days (the next time I give the garden a good drink of water).  They should give me a harvest next month.

While I am showing my garden, look at these moss roses!  I absolutely adore moss roses but I've had a hard time growing them at the edge of the forest.  They are happy here at the end of the raised bed, especially since it stopped raining every day.

The marigolds are happy, too... for the sunshine and the heat.  After I finished harvesting mint and lemon verbena today, I was not as happy with the heat as the flowers.  But the sunshine was nice.

By the way, I noticed when re-checking comments that I have had 15,555 comments so far.  Wow.  I had no idea...