I paid the half year property tax on our old house yesterday. I forgot to do it before the courthouse closed at 4:30. Seriously, why are they not open until 5:00? And why do I forget that all the time? Anyway, I ended up paying it online, which made it cost an extra $12. I guess that's what I get for waiting until the last minute...again.

Oh, well. Such is life when you take a couple days off from being organized. Getting myself back there again, pronto.

DH and I are going out to the house for a few hours tonight to see if we can't get the last of it packed up. Then maybe tomorrow we can borrow FIL's truck and take a load to storage and maybe do a dump run, also. There is definitely enough to do a dump run. Which reminds me, I need to cancel the garbage service for the house on Monday. All the stuff we have left is too big to fill up the can with and will have to go to the dump, so no point in paying their monthly service charge when we are no longer needing to put anything out.

Neighbor asked if we were going to keep our generator. I think we are just going to let him have it. We paid $500 for it, but it's ten years old and he keeps an eye on the place for us, chases off the kids who sometimes like to congregate in the yards of empty houses, and makes sure the windows aren't broken. We don't need one for town and the type we would need if we did would have a different tail on it anyway. So no big deal to let him have it, especially for all the stuff he's done.

He also asked if he could have our compost. Not the bins, just what's in them and I've agreed to that. I was just going to dump it into the existing flower beds but I wasn't looking forward to the backbreaking work of shoveling compost, so he'll come and take it and we won't have to worry about it spreading it. One less thing on our to do list.

I forgot to mention in the Safety Net entry that I went to my mother's today and we went out and picked her two blueberry trees (yes, they are trees, you don't know how tall they are) and her green beans. I ended up bringing home a gallon of blueberries and 2 gallons of green beans. Not bad for an hour of work.

The thing is though, that in three or four more days they will all be ready to be picked again. Oh, well, blueberries freeze and green beans can, so whatever she gives me I will gladly accept. Meanwhile we are going to be eating plenty of produce.

I've got cauliflower about to need to be picked, broccoli (mine bolted) from the neighbors in exchange for some of my zucchini, the aforementioned zucchini, cucumbers, and yellow crookneck squash. I'm still picking raspberries and the occassional strawberry (some of the plants are everbearing, not June bearing), and plenty of herbs.

I've got lots of tomatoes on my one plant that are green. My garlic is just about ready to pull. My potatoes are ready to be dug, and I've got kohlrabi coming out my ears. My bush cherries are getting there, maybe two more weeks and my own little blueberry bush is almost ready to be picked. I've got pears and apples like crazy but they won't be ready until September. I think I will can pears this year.

Imagine what I could be harvesting if I'd been able to plant more than half my raised beds this year? Scary thought.

I don't think I will buy any produce other than corn and lettuce for the month of August. My lettuce bolted the week the temp went up to 105. Maybe I should plant some lettuce seeds, too. I think there's still enough time for it to produce if I do. And maybe get some radishes in.

There are going to be a lot of good meals this week that are veggie heavy that's for sure. And lovely berries for dessert!

At 8:30 a.m. it was already 87 degrees out. There is a hot wind blowing and all the trees are shedding what looks like 1 inch long, 1/8 inch diameter pinecones. It looks like it is snowing, if snow were bigger and you know, brown.

It's just supposed to get hotter and hotter. I set the sprinklers in the garden this morning and will let them run until noon, I think. The ground is parched and everything is growing so fast right now. I don't want to lose any of the veggies, because having them is making a major dent in my food bill.

I had every single house fan going in the windows all night to get the house cold. I have several of those double window fans which work really well. It's nice and cool but I imagine that won't last past noon when the sun is directly overhead and beating in through the skylights.

I'm so glad I did all that crockpot cooking last week. It is really making a difference that I have so much I can just warm up in the microwave and not have to heat up the house by using the stove.

I almost had scary neighbors again. Or a scary neighbor. I hate that the house next door is a rental. There's only four rentals in the entire development and why does one have to be next door to me? I wish the owner would just sell it.

Anyway, after Tobias got on the bus to summer school today I ran into board president of the development and he told me that the house next door had almost been rented to a guy who had said he had one misdemeanor for pot possession ten years ago.

Well, fortunately the owner of the rental ran a background check because he had that misdemeanor all right, ten years ago. Of course, he had failed to mention the ten felony counts of manufacturing crack and meth that he'd gotten in the years since then. Or that he was currently using, which is why he was thrown out of his last home. So why is this guy not in prison? I thought we were tough on drug offenders?

This isn't even that kind of neighborhood. The puppy mill out of that house was bad enough. And they were really creepy. This guy would have given me nightmares and made me fear having my kids out in the yard. It's such a nice house. Why does it attract the freaks?

Okay, anyway this afternoon we went to town to see the chiropractor. Then I picked up organic milk and tortilla chips (2 1 pound bags for $3) at the grocery store and cherries at the gas station. No, that's not as odd as it sounds. They have various cherry stands around town and this one is at the gas station near the grocery store. I spent $8.65 for the groceries and $10 for 8 pounds of bing cherries. That works out to $1.25 a pound, way better than anywhere else.

We also had dinner at McDonalds which came to $12.17, and stayed in the lovely air-conditioned playland for an hour.

The temperature was 86 today. There was a breeze but it was still pretty stifling. We stopped by Mom's for an hour before heading home with a bag full of snow peas and kohlrabi. I've been watering since we got home. The ground has gotten really dry really fast and the flowerbeds and the garden really needed it. I am tempted to leave the garden on all night, but if I do it when I get up at 7:45 to get T ready for school I can let it go until 11:00. The question is will I remember to do that in my sleep deprived state? I don't know. My timers only work for 2.5 hours so if it needs longer I either set it and forget it or go out in the pitch dark and I don't wanna.

I added $2.55 to the coin jar today.

I've had writer's block since the end of April. I really hit a wall with it, but last night it finally ended and I wrote five pages. It probably would have been more but it was late and I needed to go to sleep. But I've got lots of ideas now and I'm sure I can get another ten pages at least today.

Of course, I have to do yard work and harvest some food from the garden and add some compost around the cucumber vines and the kohlrabi and take the kids to the pool for an hour at least, so I probably won't get to it until after supper or possibly after the kids go to bed tonight. But at least I feel like I'll finish this book before the end of the year. Which is my goal.

Today is a much more manageable 75 degrees. Still a little hotter than I like but soooooo much better than yesterday's temp. The house is nice and cool from the fan's running all night and early morning. And I don't have to use the oven, so it won't get hot from that.

We aren't going anywhere today so it will be a no spend day. I do need to schedule some electronic payments to be made for next week, but I count those as made on the day they go through.

Shoot, I know there was something else I wanted to blog about today. Phooey. Well, it'll come to me eventually.

Is anyone else melting? I cannot believe how hot it was today. It got up to 85. Now I know some of you from southern climes might scoff at 85, but 85 in western WA is like 115 in Nevada. Trust me, I've been there when it's 115, I know of which I speak. It's so humid today it feels like being slapped with a hot wet towel when you step outside.

I have a friend from Puerto Rico who came to visit a couple years ago. She thought I was kidding about our pesky little 85 degrees. By the time she was to go home she said she'd much rather deal with the heat in PR, than the heat in the Pacific North West.

So anyway, I've been uncomfortable most of the afternoon. It gets really cool at night, so last night I had a fan in every window and the house was actually cold in the morning, but not unpleasantly so. I kept all the blinds and curtains closed through the day. The house stayed pleasant until about two, which was when I headed in to pick up my kids in my nice, air-conditioned car.

I went to Costco first and bought protein, beef and fish and chicken, and also kosher all beef hotdogs, some Progresso chicken soup and shampoo, allergey pills, lens cleaners and a few other items I can't think of. Oh, and a fast and easy Chinese cookbook. I wanted to buy the other Chinese cookbook they had but it was coffee table sized. Not the size to put on a coffee table, but the size of a coffee table. I still might get it in the next pay cycle but it was awfully heavy and I'll have to think about it. It's not going to be an easy one to just whip out and use, but it had some lovely photographs. Spent exactly $127.00 at Costco. It always weirds me out when it comes out to a perfect whole number like that.

So, then I picked up the kids and we came home to a house that was now blazing hot. The outside temp was down to 70 by the time I got home around 6:30. They went down the road to play after helping me put away the groceries. I got the window fans going on the shady side of the house and opened the curtains, then turned the fans around on the sunny side of the house to pull the hot air out of the house and expel it outside, which also helps draw it in from the cool side.

The front road strips of grass were in shade so I went ahead and mowed them. It's been four or five weeks, I think since they've been done. I didn't feel too bad about it since no one else had been mowing their lawns either. Bet they will be now! Anywho, then I did the inside of the horseshoe flowerbed, which was in shade by then. I dumped the grass bag into the compost 3 times and it was stuffed full. To put this in perspective, a normal mow of those three areas will fill the bag once. I hacked down some burdock, too. Stupid stuff will take over if you let it.

I set the sprinklers in the garden to go for two hours. They'll go off at 9:20. It won't be dark until 10:20 and with this heat the plants will be dry by then.

Tomorrow I have to pick strawberries, harvest broccoli and check on the zucchini and squash plants. You should see my bush cherries. They are loaded. They won't be ready until they turn black though, probably another 3 to 4 weeks. They are bright red right now. The raspberries are just starting to turn slightly pink.

I also need to mow around the propane tank and maybe some of the back yard, and weed eat the parts in the front that are not accessible to the mower. I'm also going to cut back the clematis that has finished blooming. It's way overgrown but had too many pretty flowers on it to trim it sooner. It's supposed to be partly cloudy but still pretty hot tomorrow.

We'll probably spend an hour down at the pool as well. I want to set up our quick set pool but I have to mow the lawn in the back first though.

We spent a lot of money today. Well, for us its a lot of money. We bought a new desktop computer with flat panel monitor for $745. We'll get back a rebate of $150 on the computer and $50 on the monitor. So all told it will come out to $545.

There was no real fix to the old one. We could have replaced the power supply thingy that was fried and the motherboard that went with it for about half the cost we paid for the new one. We decided we'd just rather put that money into a new one instead. But the hard drive is okay and DH will be able to hook it up to the new one so we can retrieve all of our photos and the few documents and spreadsheets that were stored there.

I have been looking for awhile but was hoping to put it off longer, but then the PC went belly up and it really couldn't be postponed too much longer. And DH really wanted to just go ahead and get a new one and not try to fix or replace bits anymore on the old one.

So I decided not to stress about it and I'm happy with the result and so is DH and so will the kids be when we pick them up tomorrow night from my mother's house.

I got the final bill (at least I hope it is the final bill) from my surgery in May and I owe $1187.60 now that insurance has paid its portion. I'll call them on Monday and see if I can set up a payment plan of $200 a month. Or even $250. I wish it didn't have to be so darn expensive to have medically necessary services in this country. But that's another rant for a different day.

DH and I are going down to Burlington tomorrow to buy shoes for Mr. Bigfoot. He's a size 16 and it is hard to find them in our county, but there is an outlet mall that has a Van's store in Burlington that carries 16's.

We are also going to see a movie (Silver Surfer) and have a little date. We only see 2 to 3 movies a year in the theater, ususally some kind of sci-fi thing because they're always better on the big screen. Our other two movies this year will be Transformers and Harry Potter. DH really wants to see Transformers on the big screen. I wasn't that keen on it until I saw Josh Duhamel was in it, then I was okay. I did watch the cartoon as a child, but still...

But I really like Josh Duhamel. I was in the audience of a talk show when he visited the PNW a few years ago, back when he was still on All My Children, which I didn't watch, but I was really impressed with his manners and how respectful he was to the hosts and to the fans afterwards. So I followed his career after that and its nice to see him in a big movie. Plus, eye candy.

On the gardening front, I've got two heads of broccoli that are close to ready to harvest. I can't wait. There's nothing like going from garden to pot to table in less than an hour.

Today was payday, but I'm not going to get around to doing bills until Sunday I don't think. And that's about it from my little corner of the universe.

...is weeds, weeds, weeds, everywhere. But that's okay because when I open them they are gone. Well, mostly. I spent 4 hours yesterday and 6 hours today weeding and weeding and weeding some more. It reminds me of when I was a kid and picked berries in the summer, 8 to 10 hours a day, six days a week. At night when I'd close my eyes that's all I would see.

My garden looks like a garden again. I probably should have taken a before photo, its hard to believe it is the same place. I let most of my garden lay fallow last year. Pretty much everything but the permanent crops of berries, asparagus and herbs. Oh, I had a pot of peas and one of beans and one of tomatoes, but the raised beds didn't get used. So they went to the weeds and the pathways after summer ended went to the weeds.

Now I've pretty much got it all reclaimed and partially planted. I thought I'd list what I have so far.

6 broccoli plants
6 cauliflower plants
6 red cabbage plants
24 kohlrabi plants
10 potato volunteers
7 cucumber plants (one didn't make it before planting
1 large zucchini plant
5 green leaf lettuces (one got eaten up by slugs)
8 yellow crookneck squash
1 hanging basket full of peas
1 Tigerella Heirloom tomato plant in blossom
10 garlic bulbs

permanent plants
asparagus
strawberries
blackberries
blueberries
raspberries
bush cherries
Saskatoons (berries)
apple tree
3 pear trees (one immature)
1 dwarf cherry tree
various herbs

What I still need to plant from seed:
green beans
radishes

Once I get those in I'll look around for space to see if I want to plant anymore.

I also planted wave petunias in alternating red and white down the driveway flowerbed and some bright yellow (not orangey) marigolds in a mass planting with red salvias on other side. The lilies there are getting ready to bloom and they will be deep orange and then towards the end of summer the bright orange Japanese lanterns will bloom. There is some red dianthus that is blooming right now, and the roses have tons of tight flower heads on them. There's also some hot pink something or other I did not plant there, but they migrated from across the yard.

Then I put some hot pink and some magenta wave petunias in the front whiskey barrel that has daffodils in the early spring, pulled the daffs frist and stuck the bulbs in some good compost in a different pot. The front whiskey barrel goes with the roadside flowerbed which is predominately pinks, whites, purples and blues. That bed is starting to bloom. Well the bachelor buttons have been out for a bit and the blue geranium has as well. The hot pink roses are blooming and the white goosenecks, daisies, and something else blue is blooming. Tons more to come in a couple weeks though. That flowerbed is 32 feet long and 4 feet wide.

I need to do the shade bed still. It is still weedy and the ornamental grass is doing a runner and needs to be set back. The hostas all came up beautifully this year but something ate the cyclamen. I have another hosta to plant there and I think that will make five varieties now. It also has some creeping red sedum and some violets. And lots of dandelions, unfortunately. Well, that bed is only eight feet long and one foot wide so it shouldn't take more than an hour to do, if that.

The peonies that belonged to DH's G'Ma are opening. My G'Ma's should open in another week or so. I still have to weed the horseshoe flowerbed, which is 16 feet on one side, 32 feet on one side and 16 feet on the other side. Only one foot wide though, so I might get through that with about four hours of work. Then the caladiums and coleus will need to go in the one stretch of 16 feet of bed. Everything else there is perrenial.

It's a lot of work and I hope the weather holds. I should think of mowing the lawn at some point but since it is already six to twelve inches shorter than anyone else in the neighborhood's at the moment I can let it go a bit longer. It's only been a week.

I got a lot accomplished and a lot of my stress dissolved. It's like I can stick my hands in the dirt and feel the stress just flowing out of me. It is very peaceful.

I did spend some money today. I got a garden hose and two new sprinklers and I got lunch from the Polynesian takeout place, Black Pepper Chicken (has celery and bokchoy in it). It came to less than $4 for the lunch. I can't remember on the hose and sprinklers, $25 or thereabouts.

My surgery this morning went really well. I'm not in any pain and its been six hours since I took pain meds, so yay! I like this minimally invasive stuff soooooo much better than the "gut you like a fish and then staplegun you shut" type of surgery.

I can't drive until tomorrow but I should be able to resume most normal activities by Sunday, like cooking, dishes, laundry, and even pulling weeds if I get motivated. But only easy to pull weeds. Anything tougher than a dandelion can stay in, like burdock root. No lawn mowing or weed whacking though. Which is why I got that done the last three days. I should be able to do those by next weekend, though.

I did get my red cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli planted in the brassica bed (which I rotate each year) and my French Crisp leaf lettuce planted in a ten gallon tub yesterday afternoon. I still have peas, kohlrabi, summer squash and green beans to plant. I need to find some cucumber starts and some well grown tomato plants. Though I don't know why I bother with tomatoes...they are cheap here and don't like mountain growing seasons.

My asparagus is showing, the most advanced is about 4 inches above the surface so should be ready to cut by Monday or Tuesday. My cherry bushes have bloomed, my strawberries are just starting to flower and I've got a bunch of new raspberry canes coming up where I transplanted them to last year. Also, I have a bunch in the original position that I think I will try to move to the better location. If they do, its no big deal as the other ones are thriving and will take over the new area soon enough.

Today is a spend day. I had to get a broad spectrum antibiotic, $10, that should have been called in last night with the pain pills but wasn't. Last night's med was also $10, plus I had to renew my potassium prescription at $10, too. Glad it wasn't $40 like my BP med earlier this week!

Oh, the doc was able to do the surgery with a sedative and local anesthetic instead of putting me under general anesthetic. I was still asleep. I don't like not being under local if I'm awake, but thankfully I was out cold. That will be much cheaper, not only in the cost of the drug but in the cost of the time the anesthesiologist had to sit with me. Not as long in the recovery area either as I woke up much faster.

That about wraps it up for me for today.

Yesterday I picked up some veggie starts for the garden.

$ 1.25 6 pack red cabbage starts
1.25 6 pack broccoli starts
1.25 6 pack cauliflower starts
1.25 6 pack green leaf lettuce starts
-------
$ 5.00

$ 2.50 for 8 yellow summer squash starts
1.25 for one tri-color sage start
1.25 for one golden sage start
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$ 5.00

Total spent on veggie starts: $10.00. I estimate harvesting at least $100.00 worth of vegetables from this $10 investment.

I also bought a package of kohlrabi seeds for $0.99 and found my packs of Kentucky Blue and Blue Lake green pole beans and hope to get them planted today.

I have some weeding to do first. Yesterday was nice and sunny that after my dentist appointment, I managed to mow the front roadside ditches and a small strip behind the horseshoe flowerbed, which is technically part of the greenway that the development is supposed to maintain but they never do. Since it was dandelions in bloom, I mowed them down to keep them from going to seed directly into the backside of that flower bed. That filled up my mower bag and wore me out. It also topped off the compost bin, so I am going to have to start the second bin going today, which means moving all the gardening stuff I've been storing in there out of it and finding another home for it.

I will mow more this afternoon. Probably inside the horseshoe flowerbed and maybe a wide circle around the umbrella clothesline. The wind was really strong yesterday but everything would have ended up with dandelion pollen on it if I had hung anything to dry on the line.

I also weeded the front foot down the length of my 32 foot roadside flowerbed. I still have to get at the back three feet of it, though. I would have done more but there's a creeping thorny vine in it that snuck over from the neighbor's yard and I have to find what I did with my garden gloves before I even attempt that. But it looks presentable from the road and that counts for a lot.

I really have to wash my car, too. If it gets warm enough I will try to get it done today. I want it done before my surgery on Friday. It is so dirty it is ridiculous.

Well, I'm off to do my monthly Costco run. Not that much that I need there today, fluorescent light bulbs, sirloin patties for making hamburgers, and chicken pot pies because I've been promising the kids. Some lettuce, some fruit, and maybe some seafood if it looks good toay. I also need to put money on the gas card, so I probably will hit over $100 there. But definitely not for food.

I'll also make a brief run to Haggen to see if they have any kohlrabi in. I think it might be between seasons.

I'd like to make a stop at Lowe's to see what kind of veggie starts they have, maybe WalMart for the same reason. Depends on how crazy I want to make myself today. If Haggen has enough of what I want in their garden shop, then I might not bother with the other two places.

I'll try not to go hog wild and I won't be eating out today.

I wrote three more pages today. Really didn't want to stop but this is the last day I have to go shopping without the kids.

Did I mention in my last post what a lovely day today was? It got up to 72 degrees in town, and 68 at home and it was bright and sunny. Last week at this time it was snowing. Go figure. MSN weather said it was going to rain all day and be 50 degrees. Guess you can see why I use google weather most.

Anyway, it was finally a nice enough day for a long enough time when DH was actually home, that we took down the outdoor Christmas lights. I bet I made the neighbors happy. Not that I really care what they think anyway if I have a few light up deer and some other standees in my yard when their idea of lawn ornamentation is white trash junk yard deals and six cars in various states of do they run or not. Well, or what the other neighbors think either. We're quiet, good neighbors, pay our association dues on time every year and keep the weeds mowed. I figure if it bugs them they can tell me and no one ever has.

But I am glad to have them down because it means I can now get to weeding flowerbeds and garden beds if the weather stays clear. I am so ready for spring. Today was a gorgeous taste of it and I want more.

I did some poking around and I have crocus, daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths all coming up, which usually doesn't happen up here in the mountains until April. I may have blooms in 3 weeks instead of the end of April. Oh, and my primroses are blooming, very pretty. Of course, I found my first slug today, too. Ick. Still pretty small though, less than an inch long. I hope they aren't bad this year and that all the cold killed the eggs, but I fear they may be nasty.

I am raring to go on veggies, but from past experience I don't dare plant until April and even then sparingly. We've had a hard frost as late as April 15th and I don't fancy losing seedlings. But I can at least plant snow peas on the 1st.

We're going to have to do some serious fence repair or replacement this summer. The old fence is just rotting and it was so poorly installed by the previous owners. I'm surprised its lasted eight years as it is. Just another thing to put on the list. We have a wants list and a needs list, and fence goes on the needs list because we live off the highway and I don't need my kids wandering out of the backyard and up there and getting themselves run down, especially as we are on a dead man's curve sort of area.

I really hope they hurry up and get the funding for that project at DH's work because I have so many things that need doing and we can't start until it comes through.

No, not money. Nor political parties. Nope, its January and my daydreams turn to garden thoughts. I can't plant until late April, or mid-April if I use cloches, but my first seed catalog came in the mail and I'm off and running...at least in my head.

I've actually convinced DH to help me this year (so less of the grocery budget goes towards produce and more towards steak!) and the kids know it is going to be part of their responsibility as well. Tobias likes doing stuff in the garden, Rose, not so much. But they both like eating garden produce, so they'll both help this year.

Here are some of my gardening goals for this year:

Plant enough green beans to at least can a six month supply. Some things won't grow in my garden but green beans are prolific. I usually plant one 8 by 4 foot garden bed with pole beans on 8 teepees. Which is great for getting through the summer and having about 2 gallons left over 2 freeze. But I want more than that, and we eat a lot of green beans.

Transplant our two blueberry bushes and our Saskatoon bush out of the yard and into the garden proper where they will get adequate light and nutrients from the soil.

Dig up the asparagus crowns and put them on Freecycle. They grow fine, but I'm the only one who eats them and so much ends up getting wasted. Better to give them to someone else and use the valuable space for something else.

Convince myself not to plant a lot of corn, or possibly any corn. There are a lot of farms that grow corn here and they sell it for 10/$1.00. When you can get 100 ears for $10 to freeze, corn is not a good use of garden space. No matter how good it tastes 10 minutes from picked to cooked.

Do plant potatoes. They taste better than anything out of the stores and haven't been as cheap in the last couple of years, and they grow well in my garden.

Skip the tomatoes. They hate me, they will not grow for me, it doesn't matter how I treat them, they absolutely will not make it. No convincing myself that this year will be different. 7 years and its never different. Ditto bell peppers. Just give it up.

Plant thornless blackberries in quantity. Transplant thornless raspberries to a better location but not too near the blackberries, I don't want to end up with crossbred berries. Transplant strawberries to a better location. That portion of the garden will probably end up raspberries on one end, then blueberries, then strawberries, then blackberries across the shorter side of the garden rectangle. The transplants will grow anywhere in the garden, but they are in the way of how the new layout will go. This will be their permanent home, though.

Plant leaf lettuces only, head lettuce will be consumed by slugs, not me. Mix in spinach, radish, garlic bulbs and scallions. Do not try to grow onions, just use the scallions and deal with the fact that regular onions won't grow from sets in my garden, even if I plant them in the fall.

Plant 2 beds with broccoli, cauliflower, purple cabbage and kohlrabi, all plants from the same family.

Increase the herb bed, replace the tricolor sage that was destroyed by over enthusiastic pruning by children.

Plant 3 zucchini plants (not more!) and try planting cucumbers one more year, with an eye towards giving them up next time. Do not put the beds near each other. Think about squash if there is room.

Plant a second cherry tree to help fertilize the so-called self-fertilizing cherry tree we already have.

That's all I can think of now.

With today's auto deposit into savings of $10, my new long term account total is $330.52. I have not gotten around to opening an ING account. I have been waiting for the checks to come in on my new checking account first. They have finally arrived and I will pick them up tomorrow, which is payday. The CU said it didn't have the routing number until the checks came. I don't know if that is true or not, but I certainly didn't have it until they came.

I'm so far behind in so many things right now, due to my back being wonky. But it is finally feeling better so I am getting caught up. Or starting to. Yesterday I was able to tackle about a third of the weeds in the garden. Six kitchen garbage bags full, which my neighbor hauled to the green drop off in town. It takes garden waste and composts it ($2 a truckload, neighbor was going anyway) at very high temperatures and then uses the compost in the parks and gardens and roadside plantings throughout the city.

Last year was the first year they had to charge for it, but its still a great way to get rid of stuff for cheap and know that it is going to be used to good purpose. Normally I will compost it myself but this stuff had seed heads and tap roots and an annoying pernicious local fern that can propagate itself from the smallest piece of root left over, and my compost pile does not get hot enough to kill off the seed heads, I am a slow composter (or a lazy one) and only turn my pile a couple times a year. It still turns out okay, just takes longer.

I am also getting caught up on dishes again. I could not stand for long at the sink without putting strain on the tweaked muscles and as it was the kids had to put stuff in the bottom for me and hand stuff up to me when it was time to empty the dishwasher. Now I can do it myself. We've been eating a lot of the stockpile of TV dinners so that I didn't get overwhelmed with new dirty dishes while tackling the old.

Yesterday I made the decision that I could not wait any longer for it to stop raining so I used my dryer for what couldn't fit on the two shower curtain rods in the bathrooms. Still have so much to do. 3 weeks with a bad back and DH in Alaska for all but 5 days of it, does not a tidy household make. And he will not be back for another 6 to 8 days. Sigh. Its a good job and it pays well, but sometimes I hate it.

Not much else going on. Tomorrow is payday, so I will deposit at least $10 into the freezer account and mabye $20 or $30 into long term savings, we'll see after I pay that set of bills.

I'm going to wait until the absolute last minute before I pay the homeowner's association dues, which is due the last day of July. It looks like the association is going to fall apart, the golf course was sold awhile ago and they've closed the pool due to the roof falling in and mold, so there seems no further purpose to paying dues. They don't maintain the greenways or the roads like they are supposed to and I don't want them to go belly-up with my half year dues in their account. So I will play it by ear.

We still want to refinance the house so we will probably pay the dues anyway if they haven't fallen apart, because if we don't they can put on lien on our property. Can't refinance with a lien. Plus we have always kept current with our dues, though it seems no one else has. Probably why the pool problem hasn't been fixed. Whatever happens, happens. I'll have the money set aside whatever the course.

I had to take Rose shopping for summer clothes today. She's outgrown everything. Well, it still all fits but the shorts are way too short now to be worn in public and certainly too short to be worn to school. Fortunately there was a very good sale going on and we were able to pick up 4 pairs of bermuda style shorts and one longer knit pair, and 4 tank tops with the non-spaghetti straps. She still had a couple of tank tops that fit and weren't in danger of becoming half shirts that will coordinate with what we bought. Spent $54 rounded up and that includes our 8.2% sales tax.

I have to go through what my son has tomorrow. Most of his growth has been through the back area, though his legs have grown, too. But I was already buying him extra long tank tops last year and most of the boys shorts available were either board shorts, or the pants that you zip the ends off and they become shorts. He doesn't get any bigger around, just keeps growing taller. I'm hoping he won't need much.

I also had to buy a new garden hose and some new sprinklers. One of the hoses had been left out over the winter full of water and it froze and it caused holes. Fortunately they weren't too expensive, the sprinklers were $5 each and the hose was $8 for 100 foot hose. That was $13, tax included. I have to keep my big organic garden properly watered or I lose the money and the benefit of growing my own veggies to save money.

So $67 spent today.

I shouldn't have to spend any more money before Friday, except to pay for my oil change tomorrow. And hope that nothing else needs doing on the car.

I picked up 3 flats of petunias today (@ $13 for 48 plants, so I am done with the petunia budgeted money. It's going to look amazing though and it was a really great sale. I got a vividly hot pink, a magenta dark pink, and a red. Other than caladiums and a new sage plant, I should have no more garden spending this summer.

I'm bummed about my sage plant. It was six years old, 18 inches high and 2 feet wide and it was the most gorgous tri-color. But this last winter killed it off and it just about broke my heart to have to yank it out. But sage plants are cheap and I can easily justify getting one since we make vast amounts of homemade sausage (or as my daughter calls it: sauce sage).

Bought enough milk ($11)to get through until next payday, and won't be going to the store again until then, either.

We also spent $4.50 at soccer today for 3 bottled waters. Since it was the last game, I also took the kids out for pizza. It was just under $25, but there are plenty of leftovers.

So all told, spent $79.50 rounded up. Kind of spendy, but gardening saves my sanity with my DH gone so long.

I got an early mother's day gift from my mom. She took the kids overnight, which is what she wanted for her mother's day. I just gave her a colosus coleus plant.

Tomorrow will be a no spend day. I hope.

I know this, but I still constantly misplace things. Yesterday I bought new bean seeds and guess what I found today when we were cleaning the living room? Of course, the bean seeds.

Slowly, slowly since the beginning of the year we have been making progress in the direction of being organized people, and in some areas I have gotten much better. But I hate buying stuff because I can't find the stuff I originally bought. It wastes money and causes no end of irritation.

We have been throwing out a lot of stuff that we shouldn't have been keeping, recycled what we could, shredded and burned in our woodstove what wasn't safe to recycle, and given away a lot of outgrown kids clothes on freecycle.

Back in December I paid for a year's subscription to out local newspaper. I have been so busy lately that I haven't been reading the paper very much (i.e. just the comics, opinion page, and advice column. Which 2 our of 3 I can access online.

When we aren't using the woodstove much now that it's spring, it doesn't even get another use. So tomorrow I am going to call them and drop down to Sunday and holiday paper delivery. And then walk down to the gas station and get the Tuesday paper that has the grocery fliers in it after putting the kids on the bus. That will help so much with the clutter problem.

I may even cut out the Sunday paper and get a seven month refund. I only get it for the ads really, and my mother usually has those at her house. Or maybe they have them on-line. I will have to check into that.

Today was a no spend day. We made tacos without lettuce today because we were out. Nobody complained though. Had everything else on hand and it still tasted good. It's probably going to be about 2 to 3 weeks before I can start picking lettuce leaves out of the garden.

So April is over and I finally feel like I am one step beyond chaos. I started this blog on April 9th with $105 in my long term savings account, and today there is $185 in it. My only goal was to add $10 a week to it, but somewhere along the way I put in $50 that I didn't need. Maybe that won't happen every month, but I at least know that its a possibility. It all seems very strange.

I feel like the dream of finacial stability is reachable. Seems odd with such a small amount in savings, but it will get better and I will get better at putting money in. I don't feel helpless. I know its still a pretty steep hill I'm climbing, but at least I'm climbing.

I had to talk to my daughter tonight about using electricity. She had got it into her head that she couldn't turn the lights on at all, so she and her brother were sitting in the dark playing games from the light of the tv. I told her that we were trying to turn lights off in rooms we weren't using, not the ones we were in and that they didn't have to sit in the dark. I think she understands now. At least she turned on the light.

Maybe I've been a little overzealous about saving money, but I don't think I ever said she coudn't turn the lights on in a room she was in. Well, we'll see how it goes now that she understands the difference between wasting electricity and using electricity.

Frugal things I did today:
Hung 2 loads of laundry on the clothesline.
Baked a loaf of bread while the potroast was in the oven.
Cooked from my pantry and freezer.
Earned $8 for signing up for a free trial with gamefly, and 50 cents for signing up for another survey company, this one supposedly pays a minimum of $4 per survey, but we will see.

I did turn down one survey invitation today. It was paying $34.95 to evaluate and survey a dating site. Now I filled out a big profile on this survey site and one of the things it asks is marital status, so I don't know why the heck they are sending that offer to a married woman. I talked to DH about it and he said sign up for it, you don't have to do anything about it, but I just don't think it is ethical to do that. So I didn't. Sure wish I could have done it if I'd been single, though.

I've been thinking about what kind of goals I should have for May. Not quite sure exactly, but I probably should try to keep a complete accounting of all spending for a month. I have a pretty good idea of where we waste money, but I'm sure there are things that just slip by, as well. So I'll keep a little notebook in my purse and jot down everything I spend and for what and see where I might improve things.

Tomorrow I will have to buy some pole bean seeds. I don't know where they got to, and I know I had 2 packages of them but they aren't with my other seeds, so bummer. I did manage to weed the strawberry bed and cut down and weed half the herb bed. Managed to dig up a few starts of oregano, it likes to make babies in the walkways so I always dig them out and offer them on freecycle. We are going to have a garage sale this summer though, so maybe I'll sell them for a quarter each. Way cheaper than at a nursery, and not too expensive for garage sale pricing.

Today I paid the mortgage my parents took out on their house to pay my medical bills. It is $935 a month and I paid $1000. Then I went to the courthouse and paid the property tax, $364.69. I'm just glad I don't have to pay my parents property tax. Even with their senior exemption, its a few thousand dollars, ouch. One of the benefits of living in the boonies on a 1/3 of an acre piece of land.

I went to the grocery store and bought milk, tomato plants and tidal wave and easy wave petunias, a planned purchase. I didn't make it over to the credit union to deposit the freezer money, but I've put it in a sealed envelope so I have to tear it open to spend it. The extra step will make it easier to not just blindly grab it, I think. Also, I forgot to grab the aluminum cans this morning so didn't do that either. Well, maybe on Monday.

Filled up the car, at $3.05 per gallon, coming to $43, in an 18 gallon tank that had 3 to start with. Still an ouch. I've set aside an extra $10 to put into long-term savings, also.

I cashed out my first survey check, so that will be issued June 1 and will be $49.84. So cool, for just a few hours work. It's all good. Now I best get those tomato plants into the ground and hang some more laundry. It is 75 degrees right now and I can probably dry another load by tonight, maybe two.

I spent money today: $18.00. Well, it would have been $18.32, but I was dealing with my mother who thought it was easier to give me $2.00 back from my $20 bill, than $1.68 (I said people keep giving me money, this brings it to $0.85 this week). She went to the organic supply place and picked up a truckload of compost for my garden. Much more frugal than the $5 bags of compost that you'd need a ton of to do the same job.

I only had enough of my own homemade compost to add to one garden bed and one flower bed, so I needed the extra, especially since a couple of my beds have dropped about 4 inches over the last two years. With what she brought out I built up the 3 most depleted garden beds and have enough to do about 36 X 1 feet of flowerbeds. Once I finish spreading it around she will bring me out another load which should cover the remaining 36 X 1.5 foot driveway flowerbed and the 36 X 4 foot roadside flowerbed. Yes, I have a lot of flowerbeds.

Last year we tore down the old ramshackle green house (well it was made with that heavy duty plastic) that was on the property when we moved here and was rotting badly. But that has expanded the food garden space significantly. I doubt I will use it this year, I need to tack down a tarp and kill off all the weeds that are there. But if I get ambitious I might weed it. There is just so much else I need to do first, like get to all the dandelions before they turn into seed heads and my kids are tempted to make wishing stars by blowing them all over the place.

I planted some more lettuce and put up my eight bean teepees and will plant green bean seeds tomorrow. We are well past the date of last frost and it was 76 today! Very breezy, too. The laundry dried fast. I dried four loads today. But I digress. I will be planting kohlrabi and radish seeds tomorrow and maybe more if I don't get lazy. Both kids are in school tomorrow and DH is in Alaska, so I have the option of being lazy. Though I seldom am. I like being in the garden too much to stay inside for long on a beautiful day.

Anyway, spending money on the compost will pay off substantially this summer as we eat all of our organic produce. Things grow better with good compost. And a little fish emulsion doesn't hurt either. I may even trek to the bay this year and get a couple garbage bags full of seaweed to add to my own compost. Nature's perfect fertilizer. Although, I should probably find out if there are any regulations on that. There didn't used to be, but better safe than sorry.

Goodness, that got rambly. Oh, well. It's no surprise by now that I tend to write a good bit, is it?