Garage Sale Days

 It was a warm Thursday morning in August when we began the first of two consecutive garage sales!!

It has been 4-5 years since our family has held a garage sale.  When we lived in the subdivision it was nearly an annual happening, looked forward to by all of us children.  But since we moved to the country we have been rather too busy to even think on the subject.  Until now.

 

We did not have very much stuff to get rid of, so we offered to host a Multi-family garage sale for some friends of ours. 

Down at the end of the driveway I set up shop with our baked goods/produce stand.  This was a habit we had got into down in Riverview, and sometime the bake  sale profits rivaled those of the garage sale.

One of the most interesting items at our garage sale, were the multiple boxes of license plates that Mr. Reiche brought.

They sold like hotcakes, especially during the first garage sale!

We were very grateful for help from some of the children of the families involved.  I especially would have been lost without my "assistance" at the bake sale/produce table.

God blessed us with beautiful blue skies for all but one of the days, and it was comfortably warm with a gentle breeze.  Gorgeous!

(Happy Customer!)

Sadie was thrilled with her first garage sale.  She was allowed to lay in the shade of the oak all day long, wagging at all the people that came and went, and barking at any shadow of a dog.

It was a wonderful and rather successful experiment, this first country garage sale of ours and we quite enjoyed ourselves.  But, I think we are definitely done with garage sales...

  For this year at least!:)

~Chs

Fellowship

(I am still trying to catch up on the events of August, so please bear with me)

 Way back in the middle of August, we were blessed to be able to have the Hayse family over for some fellowship and dinner.

The boys were drawn like magnets to the sand box and spent all the time before dinner, making armies and having battles.

Green beans are plentiful in our garden right now, and one of the boys loves them... raw!

The new baby in the family, sweet little Alice with her biggest brother.

After supper we enjoyed a few rounds of rousing volleyball.

Service with a smile:)

When it had grown too dark to play volleyball, we all gathered around the campfire singing praise to our LORD and Savior. 

~Chs

 

WIT Conference

Thanks to blogger's new and improved website (finally!), I am now pleased to present to you a post that should have been up two weeks ago.

It was the 11th of August when Faith and I took to the road (I, with my newly acquired drivers license!) and left our homeland of Michigan for a conference in Indiana.

 The WIT conference was held at the beautiful and serene (except when the train went thundering by early in the morning) Verity campus.

 The messages were thought provoking, and life changing in many various ways.  More complex than I can summarize for you with the limited number of words at my disposal.

 

If I had to pick one of my favorite aspects of the conference, it would have to be how they gave you time to reflect after the sessions, sometimes with your small table group, and other times alone.

We made many new friends,

Both Human and animal:)

My very sweet table group,

and Faith's group of girls.

These are the 9 girls that we smashed into one room.  Very cozy!!

Faith and I are very glad that we were able to attend this conference, and are thankful to God for all we learned there.
~Chs

Harvesting Garlic

(Dear readers, I apologize for the lack of post recently. I have been having a battle with Blogger on whether I can upload pictures or not. I have finally persuaded it to see my point of view, and therefore now present you with the post that should have been up 5 days ago, complete with pictures!)

One of my favorite types of produce to harvest from the garden are the vegetables that you plant in the spring (or in this case last fall), completely forget about all summer, then in early fall discover that they are ready to harvest! Onions, potatoes, carrots, and garlic, are all part of this delightful category.

The other day (okay about a week or so ago;) we decided it was about time to harvest our garlic, and so set about the congenial task.

We laid them out on a screen (up out of the way of mischievous puppies) to dry for a few days.

When they were sufficiently dry, Mother brushed off all the dirt, and I set about to braid them.

Once done, we had 6 beautiful braids of healthy garlic, about 66 heads in all. That should take us a whole year, of Chicken soup, garlic broth, pickles etc...!!
~Chs

Nearness to Christ

"Gracious souls are never perfectly at ease unless they are in a state of nearness to Christ, for when they are away from Him, the lose their peace. The nearer to Him, the nearer they are to the perfect calm of heaven; the nearer to Him, the fuller their heart is, not only of peace, but also of life, vigor, and joy, for these all depend on constant communion with Jesus. What the sun is to the day, what the moon is to the night, what the dew is to the flower, such is Jesus Christ to us."
~C. H. Spurgeon

Garden Photos

Though the tomatoes are not quite ripening by the dozens yet (due to this gorgeous, yet early cool weather) our garden is still a place of beautiful harvest. The other day I was outside picking some vegetables, fruits, flowers etc. and since I had my camera with me, I also came away with many pictures which Faith suggested I share with you all. So let me show you our garden.

In the back half of the garden, broccoli and kale, beans and onions, tomatoes and peppers all coincide in harmony.


This year we "strung" our tomatoes and they seem to have enjoyed it, because they are healthy and so bushy that it is difficult to walk between rows!

Smattered here and there at the end of rows are bright beautiful flowers, just enough to lend a splash of color to the green.

Some of the flowers were planted purposely by humans, but all the sunflowers were volunteers.

The front 12 rows of the garden house cucumbers (both pickling and slicing)...

Lettuce (which is actually sprinkled in and out all around the garden)...

4 rows of very healthy corn (which we now realize is not near enough for a family of 7)...

Big, fat, orange carrots (which are rather too large in diameter, if you ask me:)...

and rows and rows of bush beans (some of which decided that they were really pole beans:).

Our vegetable garden is along the west side of our yard which is lined with a chain link fence, and clambering and climbing all along the fence is a grape vine. The picture above, is of our faithful and steadfast "Grapevine Guardian" Garter snake.

The "Vegetable Garden" is just one out of four of our official gardens. Right behind our fence lies the sprawling Squash and Pumpkin patch, which is hedged in by potatoes.

Our Butternut Squash have taken a while to set on (the picture is of one of our volunteer squash plants in the compost/weed pile) so we are hoping for enough warm weather that they will ripen in time.

Last but not least (besides our Strawberry patch of course) is the melon patch. We have never succeeded with melons, in fact our watermelons have never gotten bigger than 4-6 inches in diameter and were always green, and our cantaloupes never came at all.

We were overjoyed this year to find our melons actually growing, and while we don't have near as many melons as could be reasonably expected from the number of plants we have, there is one beautiful watermelon which has exceeded our expectations, and is currently as large as any melon seen in the store! There are also about a half dozen-or-so cantaloupes around the size of a softball.
I think that gardens, almost more than anything teaches you patience, reliance, and trust on God's providence. Because you can only do so much to the plants. The harvest... That is up to God.
~Chs