I started off the morning by chugging some water and sweeping while I ate my cream of rice. I really enjoy my coffee, but I’ve been making sure to drink lots of water lately. I find when I drink water, it really helps my skin. Water is underrated. It’s like watering the roots of plants. Just like it helps them grow, it helps humans, too.
I began thinking heavily about my garden. It’s not May yet, but it’s been so long since the April update that there’s plenty to tell. Once again, the only things that have been doing great are the potatoes and the garlic chives. You may have seen how plentiful the chives were, but they’re a cool weather crop, and they’ve just about stopped producing here in Texas. I need to rip them out and plant new crops there. As I said, the potatoes are doing fantastically. They’re not bug eaten, and they’re growing abundantly in the shade. Sadly, they’re the only things doing well in the shade. (By the way, most of my yard is shade. A previous owner planted trees and bushes that make so much shade, not to mention how the house itself shades a lot of the ground.) The beets and carrots I shared pictures of in the last update post are still alive, but not substantially bigger. I got some baby greens off them yesterday, and I think I’m going to do that again today and sacrifice the root bulbs that I was looking forward to.
I had planned to grow certain things, but they all need a fair amount of sun, so that plan has changed. I do want to try and grow sunflowers in the one sunny spot in my front yard. Otherwise, I’m going to be planting potatoes. I feel a little bad, because I don’t think it should be so difficult to grow annual plants. I’ve noticed that I seem to do better with perennials. (Technically, potatoes are a short-lived perennial. My “garlic chives” are actually a closely-related cousin to traditional garlic chives, which are definitely a perennial.) I feel like it’s almost cheating to only grow the things that do really well, but at the end of the day, food is food, whether it was hard or easy to grow, so I guess I’ll be planting more potatoes.
I did replant a few things today, like my tomatoes and milkweeds. I haven’t gotten a tomato from my garden in three years of planting them, so this is my last ditch effort.
Then I did what I know I can do well, and I put my husband’s lunch in a box. I was planning to cook, but there were leftovers, so I boxed those up and decided to cook a big batch of lunch food later.
I had a break, went over the finances, and then I cooked all the food! I made that big batch of lunch food (very basic hand pies), fried up some bean patties, and made fried rice.
Oh, just before cooking up a storm, I did gather up some grass for my rabbits.
After cooking, I watched TV for the rest of the evening. I’m sure there’s something I could have been doing, but I don’t really care.
Frugal Treehugger 