Mary Ann, please turn on your GW/Houzz messaging: Up on the upper right, click on "Your Houzz", then on Edit Profile, next go to advanced settings (list on left) and scroll way, way down to where it says "who can send me a message" and change it to "allow anyone to send me a message". To message someone, just click on their name above a post. Hope that helps.

"Things were looking up on the netting trellis my Andean beans were growing on, about 8 vines are/were flowering. 3 or 4 actually have beans forming, they're still hanging on but the wind blew most of the flowers off. Still quite a few of these are not flowering yet, day length sensitive?" Annette, its actually remarkable that any of those Andean beans are not day length sensitive... you are truly fortunate to have a few that will flower early in your latitude. I am having similar good fortune with the bush hyacinth bean. There are nearly a hundred pods already set. The bushes are short but vigorous, and many new branches - already with visible flower spikes - are emerging. This plant doesn't waste any time before flowering, there is actually a good chance that it will be the first dry bean seed I harvest! Annette, I've got to send you some of these. All of my beans are flowering now except a lima ("North Star") and a pole snap ("Emerite") both of which were planted late in my rural garden. "Emerite" is beginning to climb, so I'm hoping to get enough snaps before frost to get me through the winter. "Insuk's Wang Kong" is doing remarkable well - the bumblebees & honeybees have finally appeared, and in combination with the cool spells we've had, numerous flowers have set. There are literally hundreds of pods already growing, and there seems to be better pod fill than I usually get, so it should be a great seed yield. Normally I don't get runner beans to set until the first August cool spell, at which point it's a race against frost. "Gigandes" (in the rural garden) has just begun flowering too, if we get another cool spell, it too should have dry seed. The "Gruno Rosyn" soup peas are strong & in full bloom. Quite a few pods already set, and the plants show no sign of slowing down. The seed count within the pods is higher that usual due to the cool temperatures, it should be a great seed yield. I munched on a few of the peas today, they are not as sweet as shelling peas, but still tender & pleasant. "Sugar Magnolia" is incredibly vigorous, already over 4' tall & still going strong... I had to extend the trellis. It has lots of deep purple pods, too immature yet to sample. I planted it in a location where it would have afternoon shade to protect it from the heat, and that seems to have been a good decision. Both of these peas have large, deep purple flowers, really beautiful in bloom. Cowpeas & yardlongs have really languished this year. The two planted late in the rural garden ("21 peas" and "Pink Eye Purple Hull") are actually doing better than "Green Dixie" and "Purple Pod Yardlong" which were planted on time in my home plots. They were started early as transplants, but haven't grown much since then, I'm still waiting for them to take off. Last year I was already picking the first yardlongs at about this point (also from transplants) and this year, they haven't even begun climbing yet. I think that is due not only to the cooler than normal temperatures, but to the nearly constant cloud cover for almost half of the summer. The garbanzos, after a promising start, will probably not do much. As soon as the heat came, they began to wither. I'll be lucky to get enough seed to replace what I planted. Too bad, this is a really promising garbanzo, but I just can't multiply the seed to the point where I can share it. This year I planted soybeans in some of the large pots that had eggplant last year; they are really doing well. This may prove to be a good rotation after growing tomatoes & peppers in those pots, and soybeans will probably add a lot more nitrogen & root mass than the beans I've used in rotation previously. Doesn't mean that I won't be growing beans in pots any more though, perish the thought. All in all, after a dismal start, it's good to see some crops doing well... I'm feeling a lot happier about the garden than I was earlier in the season.

Well you know what? I was thinking the same thing today. I am not a warm weather lover either, really, particularly if it's humid. And I wanted to get an earlier start on putting the garden to bed, but oh well. Thankfully some things were ready to be cut, and I cut them, but I cut other stuff today, too, (ditch lilies and some iris) because ... I WANTED TO. I'm tired of looking at it all and I want to put it to bed. But you know what? I'm saving a heck not having to run my furnace ('cause it could just have easily been unseasonably cold and thus expensive). And, I love sleeping with the fan on. Well, like TriciaE said, at least we'll be getting some rain.

Oak my Christmas tree scratch is about 3' long and right in the center of the room. The floor was about a month old and I was still waiting for my area rug to come in. As I was taking down the tree I VERY gently laid it down on the floor so I could separate the sections. As I picked up and packed each section, I saw the scratch. I could NOT believe such damage could be done by what must have been a branch gently sliding across the floor. It made me absolutely sick. I had planned to keep an area rug down most of the time, but I thought I'd take it up occasionally, because the floor is stunning without it. It's not a deep scratch and since it's under the rug I haven't tried to work on it, but I can say that none of my kids ever did any damage that horrified me the way that scratch did, lol. And there is no doubt that the majority of damage in my house, has been caused by my husband, who simply is not as careful as he should be. I'm glad I was the one that made the tree scratch because it was an early and valuable lesson as to how easily it happens. Because I KNOW how careful I was, I don't blame anyone else for an accident. Madtown, I'm relieved to hear you have reasonable expectations of your babies! I should mention that one reason my kids never damaged anything is that my house was furnished with them in mind. I didn't have any crystal or fragile things out where they could get broken. I didn't have polished wood surfaces anywhere. I frequently watched them play and often took note of the freedom they had because we had wall to wall. They could stack their wooden blocks almost to the ceiling and there was no problem when they fell down. As I think about it now, if I'd had the wood floor back then, I'd have had to restrict an awful lot of healthy, fun activities we enjoyed in the house. Speaking of which, baseball in the living room began when my eldest was two. My husband would blow up a balloon, give him one of those fat bats, and they had a great times playing like that for years. Then he graduated to wiffle ball, using throw pillows for bases. One night when the kids had gotten pretty big, too big to "run" the bases anyway, someone hit the ball really hard straight into my forehead while I was engrossed in a book. It made a very loud noise though it didn't hurt a bit. There was a collective gasp from the four males in the room, followed by all of us laughing our heads off. We all have a vivid memory of it. I hadn't realized how hard the kids had begun hitting the ball, so that night I reluctantly declared an end to indoor baseball out of concern for the windows and the TV screen. There is no question that how you can use your home is directly related to your concern for material things. I wouldn't trade those years of USING our home to the extent we did, for all the money in the world. The years went by so fast, and now sadly, I have the most unwelcome freedom to indulge in delicate furnishings.