Saturdays

Saturdays.  Easily one of my top ten favorite things in life.

My Saturday mornings follow a wonderful routine.

First, I go to garage sales.  Today's haul:

• A vase for $5.  Before you judge me, understand that his vase is awesome.  And very possibly manly.    Earthhued and etched with grapes, it resembles something a Roman farmer would have stored wine in the ancient days of the Roman Republic. I put an iris in it.  Epic.  Manly.  Vase. 
• A pair of white shorts for $1.  I needed a pair.  I paid $30 for my last pair.  I saved $29!  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  ARE YOU NOT AMAZED?!
• A ball of twine for 25 cents.  This was a mistake I regretted immediately.  My friend asked me if I used twine for my garden (I do).  But this twine is much too delicate for my garden.

Next, Farmer's Market.  This time of year you find lots of greens, potatoes, and beets.  I buy kale because I heard it's good for me.  I have not yet independently verified this, but still I buy it every week.  Blindly.  For some odd reason, Kale seems to be water resistant.  Serious.  Water beads up on it and runs off.  Try it out for yourself and see.  You can wear kale in a windstorm.

I then blend it, with an apple, some yogurt, blueberries, and this week, strawberries.  The resulting drink is very green and somewhat chunky.  It makes my teeth look like I just made out with the Seaweed Monster, but I feel my life expectancy growing as I drink it.

This week I also splurged.  Artisan bread from the local baker for $6.  3.5 lbs of free range chicken for $14.   The bread is spendy.  The chicken competitive with what you can find in the grocery stores.  

An added bonus, the money I spend each Saturday--about $30-$50 a week--goes out of my pocket and right into my neighbors.  I'd rather them have it than anyone else.  No big box or grocery store middleman.

Garage sales and farmers market.  All very fun.  All very social in my small town.  I save a ridiculous amount at garage sales.  I spend just a little more than I would at the grocery market, often less for some items, and good food that I know is quality, local and fresh.  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

 Picture Above: Manly Vase

Life's Simple Pleasures: Gardening

 Gardening.  Growing your own food and then eating it.  One of the top 10 best things in life.   Why?

1.)  Gardening is something man was meant to do.  We owe all of modern civilization to gardening.  Without it, you'd be out in the woods, half naked, chasing your next meal.  

2.)  It connects you to where you live.  You only eat what your climate and soil can grow. You gain a new appreciation for your local climate, customs and cuisine. 

3.)  It connects you to your food.  Home grown food tastes so much better.  You'll never look at the grocery store the same way again.  All that stuff came from somewhere, and some of it really isn't food any more.

4.)   It's great practice for when I have to feed myself after society's collapse.  

5.)   Gardening replaced 64 square feet of stupid, unproductive, water-hungry grass in my lawn with raised garden beds.  

Below:  Stupid grass. 

Why don't you do something with your life!

While I haven't eaten anything from my garden yet, watching it grow is it's own reward.  

Occasionally I wonder if this is what it's like being a parent.  Ignore the seed planting metaphor (please).  The immense joy at seeing the little guy sprout out of the ground is undeniable.  Based on everything 10th grade health class taught me about childbirth, it's in fact WAY better than seeing the birth of a real baby.  Plus, I've experienced it hundreds of times already this spring.  Which you wouldn't get to do with real babies unless you were Genghis Khan.

It goes on.  Like a parent, I nourish the little sprout.  Water it.  Remove the bad influences around it the best I can.  Make sure it receives the best sunlight.  And now, once a little seed, a tomato I planted looks like this:  

I brought you into the world.  I can take you out of it.                                   

Very rewarding.  Probably how I'd feel if my kid brought home straight A's.  

I got my start gardening as a kid with my dad.  We had a giant dirt field where we'd plant row up on row of potatoes, peas, broccoli and more.  We ate all the produce we could handle and sold the rest at the local Saturday Market.  I hated the weeding.  But nothing was better than as a fourth grader making between $50-$100 on a Saturday morning.  That started my lifetime interest in personal finance.

Gardening does have it's dark sides.  Chemicals (no thanks).  Bugs.  Slugs.  Weird little grubs I find deep in the ground.  But the worst is something you'd least expect.

"Mwahaha"

That's right.  Bambi.  Capable of destroying months of care and nourishment with one night of munching.  Indiscriminate.  Heartless.  And cute as buttons.  On top of everything else, gardening has taught me to hate deer.  Give it a shot.