The week, sort of.

I couldn't decide if it should be "last week" or "this week". Whatever. A time frame spanning the last five or so and next five or so days.

Last week I went to a gardening seminary showcasing the "Mittleider" method of gardening. It seems like a pretty good and manageable way of doing things and has some different options, and after much waffling I have decided, partially, which options I think would work best for my values, abilities, climate, geography, available space and so forth.

I have been daydreaming quite a bit about the backyard paradise my backyard could become. Honestly it sounds like a lot of back-breaking and sweaty work. But what about this? What if I did a little bit at a time, experimenting and seeing what works for me in my own yard, and what I can truthfully manage, and let the backyard evolve over time (years?) into something useful, beautiful, productive, and awesome?

What if I don't dig up all the grass this week, get totally exhausted and sore and mad and overwhelmed, and then give up on it?

That sounds very much not like me at all. I'm all about jumping right in with both feet and trying to achieve what is impossible for me and then completely giving up because I can't do everything.

But I think I will try. I gave up on gardening a long time ago, but have recently felt an indescribable urge to get back into it. Maybe I'll just dig up a little bit of grass and see what happens this year. Up there in the picture is my oxalis which is a volunteer plant (it just showed up in our yard one spring) and has survived drought, winter freezes, summer scorching, and neglect for years now. I love it. There are two clumps nearby to each other. That other green stuff in the pic is some wild blackberry vines which are covered in thorns that make an angry red rash when you try to pull them out. The roots are deep and long and extremely strong. I worry that it will never be totally gone from our yard. Every spring more of it comes up.

This week's dinner menu includes beef stew leftover from last week, boiled eggs, cheese sandwiches, oatmeal (with homemade/home-bottled preserved apples), and maybe a pancake/bacon dinner one night. Because my good Mr. Dub is out of town learning all about a new way of fracking there is no need for me to actually make any "real" dinner.

Frugal living pays off. I added it up - even with one son in university and one son on a two-year mission for our church - (which are both on a "pay as you go" plan; no new debt is being acquired for either) we've paid off more than $35,500.00 of debt in the last 12 months. This includes:

• one of my Pretty Girl's student loans, 
• two cars,
• and a home equity loan.

These debts have been paid off in all cases years earlier than originally expected. All that is remaining on our debt is:

• our mortgage (we have quite a bit of equity),
• one car loan,
• and one more of Pretty Girl's student loans (even though these two loans are technically her loans, we are co-signed on them which makes them in reality our loans. Lesson learned - never cosign a loan).

That makes me pretty psyched. Whenever I get sick of scrimping and saving - which has happened a few times over the past year - I look back at the progress we have made in the last year, I re-read Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and The Richest Man in Babylon by George Samuel Clason, and I get myself back on board with the program. If I can manage to continue on this path we will be out of debt except for our mortgage before the end of this year, and will have enough saved to pay cash for our trip to Argentina next spring. Which thing we really want to do.

I am still feeling a little bit overwhelmed by my life. But I am also still feeling more optimistic and upbeat than I was even a few weeks ago. I am trying to take it easy on myself and not expect that I will be perfect, even when I expect myself to be.

Which makes sense to me, anyhow.

Harvest

I've been diligently watering my little container garden through an extremely dry springtime, and it's beginning to pay off.

There are lots of little tomatoes on my tomato plant, I'm hoping that it will keep us in tomatoes all summer! I'm not so confident over the jalapeno plant - this was the only pepper growing there.

How does your garden grow?

Look! See my adorable little tomato blossoms? That's the happy news. The sad news is that the cilantro and dill, after surviving only two weeks in my yard, are already going to seed. I hope this only means that they are cool-season crops and can't take temps in the 80's and 90's and so I'm trying to not take it personally - I think I'll yank them out and plant more parsley and basil. Yes, it's already been in the upper 80's here. I won't think about what that might mean for summertime.

My preparedness jobs for April are as follows:

1. Organize and inventory three-month food supply.
2. Check 72-hour kits for expired items and replace as needed.

It might as well be said here and now that for me #2 should read "Make some 72-hour kits, you!" We did this years ago, maybe even as much as 15 years ago, when our big, grown-up and adult offspring were tiny, sweet little children. We eventually dismantled them in an attempt to replace expired items, the project got set aside to take care of later, yada, yada, yada, and so now we start again from scratch.

Our ward is promoting a "72 in 72" event, started a couple of weeks ago, where we get together a 72 hour kit for each person in our own family in the 72 days left until hurricane season begins. This week I'm gathering and/or obtaining containers for the 72-hour kits and deciding where to keep them. Will it be duffel bags or 5 gallon buckets? In the garage or the hall closet? Stay tuned...

March to-do list

Another Mormon congregation in my area has suggested monthly tasks for their Relief Society to do in order to become better prepared and self-reliant. An organized and systematic way to learn and practice living more providently over the course of a year. I'm going to do my best to keep up with them, and I hope that writing about my efforts and results here will give me some sense of accountability.

(Also, I hope that it will serve as a reminder that I'm doing this year-long project. Because I fear that I'll get halfway through and forget about it. Or maybe not even halfway through. Maybe I'll forget about the whole thing by later this afternoon. Things don't seem to stick lately. It's disturbing. But I digress.)

For March the job is simple. Start a garden.

Knowing my limitations both in attention span and ability to withstand long hours working outside in the hot summer sun, I decided a container garden will do. I thought about it, realized that tomatoes and peppers are what I most like to eat as far as fresh veggies go, added in my desire to use more fresh herbs in my cooking, and got started. I begin with:

• a single roma-style tomato plant.
• two varieties of peppers - bell and jalapeno.
• chives
• basil
• cilantro
• parsley
• dill

Start a garden? Done.

(I may as well confess right here and now that it's not only that I do want to use more fresh herbs in my cooking, I greatly fear that birds, insects, drought, and disease will impede my progress and success with growing vegetables. In order to not be a complete failure at gardening, herbs have been added to the container garden.)

spring chores

I've been out working in the yard this week. We had a couple of hard freezes this year, which hardly ever happens, and my plants are showing a lot of freeze damage. The grass is starting to turn a beautiful shade of green and the weeds are nothing short of emerald but everything else looks kind of sad.

Or so I thought.

While weeding, pruning, and mulching in the big flowerbed in the backyard, I happened upon these oxalis clumps again. Shamrocks! And just in time for St. Patrick's Day. They aren't damaged at all, and it was a nice surprise to see them. Then I remembered that later on this spring they'll have small pink flowers, and it made me happy.

Ah, springtime!

22

= the number of lovely pink lilies we've picked out of the lawn in the last two days.

Life is beautiful.