What a past few days!
I was GOING to finish hoeing around the mater plants yesterday morning. HAH! Then decided to do it after the sun was off the mater garden, in the evening. HAH! Oldest kid and husband mowed the yard (has an extra lot too), yesterday morning. I think someone needs to weedeat though. I aint gonna do it! The mater plants are looking really good. But two plants look like they've been nibbled on. My cats must not be doing their job...scaring away the rabbits or whatever is nibbling on the mater plants! Maybe the cats are eating too well...so they are less likely to hunt for their prey.
Hubby FINALLY fixed the outside faucet leak. Much to the chagrin of Sam, our half siamese cat. The faucet has been dripping for several years, and this year it has been more of a slight trickle. We've kept an old pan under it so the cats can at least benefit.....get a drink. Sam won't drink from the pan though. He likes sticking his head under the leak and licking the water as it drops out of the faucet. He likes it fresh and cold....not after it's been sitting in the pan and has been heated by the sun. Cant say as I blame him. Now he will just have to come in the house whenever he wants a cool drink.
We've been getting nice turnips lately. I think some have been left in the ground a bit too long, but they aren't bad. I prefer eating them raw with a shaker of salt, but I've cooked em a couple of times. Hubby said I need to cook a bunch of em, before they go bad. (He pulled up several yesterday.)
Oh how I love eating fresh garden vegetables! In another month, we will start getting maters! YAY! We've also been getting a little bit of broccoli. YUM! Green beans have blooms all over them. I weeded them day before yesterday. I wanna make sure that when I pick beans, that there are no creepy crawlies hiding in the weeds waiting to scare the crapola outta me!
Hubby has the mater cages out along with posts. Now if I can just finish hoeing, he will put them up. But, we do need at least enough mulch to put under the mater plants before he puts the cages around em. I can hoe and/or till the weeds around the plants, but not very close, after the cages are set. Which is why we need mulch....to keep the weeds down close to the plants. Make sense? We were wanting straw, but nobody seems to have any. The wire used to bale straw is getting expensive I guess...right along with everything else!
Hubby decided he wasn't going to set up our swimming pool this year. Said the pump went out, but even if it didn't....he didn't want to mess with it this year. Well, I am the one that usually has to put the chemicals in it, and all three of us are always constantly cleaning the stuff out of it. But it would be nice to be one with the sun. I mean....if you can't beat the heat....get out in it! And at least take a dip now and then in the pool. Water....it's a good thing. But it also costs to fill a pool the size we have. I don't remember how many gallons it holds, but it's a heckuvalot!
Been cutting back alot more on stuff. Hubby is thinking about losing the cellphones and going back to having a landline phone. The cellphones sure are handy though. And since he has to travel to another town to work, it's great to have during bad weather. Just never know when an accident might happen, or he can't get back home because he's stuck or the snow is really bad. It's also handy for when daughter gets to drive on her own. So if she has any problems she can call us. AND when she goes to school tournaments and field trips....she can call to let us know when she gets back and needs a ride home. I didn't realize just how much we depend on those things, since we got them! I think instead of getting rid of the phones, we may get rid of cable tv. There's no premium channels....just basic channels. But, if we get rid of cable tv, we may have to go to dial up internet. UGH! After being used to cable internet for so long, it would be a BIG pain in the butt to go to dial up....it's so pokey and you get knocked off all the time! AND if we went to dial up, we would also have to have landline phone to HAVE dial up internet! Oh there are lots of things we can cut back on besides those things. For now anyway.
We were thinking of getting the daughter a safe but cheap old clunker to drive. Of course, WE would expect her to take the school bus home, since drop off is only a block and a half away from home. Then she could drive to work in bad weather, walk when the weather was good. And if she had to go back to school for activities, she could go without waiting for one of us to take her. It would all be good. If the school was in the same location as the old school, she could ride a bike or walk. It's about a mile from our house, or WAS. It was torn down recently.
Considering not renewing our subscription to the newspaper. We can always go to the public library. Of course that would be a pain, because then we would have to go there every day that there is a newspaper....Tuesday through Saturday. At my workplace there is always a paper in the lounge. But who has time to read it with only about 20 minutes to eat?
We do have a half of beef ordered from the meat locker. Don't know when it will be ready. But I consider it a good investment. So if we end up losing our jobs...either one of us or both of us....we will have meat, and we will have veggies that I will be canning/freezing.
It's funny how much most people take for granted. That there will always be money to buy food, eat out whenever the fancy hits them, money for gas in the car and lawn mower.
I have a feeling things are gonna get worse, before they get better. I have heard, however, that people are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel....the end of so much unemployment and stupidly high prices on everything. I think that prices will always be high, and they will continue to be high. Even after the economy is back on it's feet.