It's actually after midnight but I figure "Midnight musings" sounds better than "12:34 AM thoughts"...

Anyway, I'm listening to archived Dave Ramsey shows, reading news stories about the President's proposed stimulus package, and eating a bean burrito. I need to get to bed soon but can't sleep. Fortunately I don't have to be at work until 4 PM so I should be able to sneak in a nap or two.

After hearing the commercials on Dave's show, I checked out e-Mealz. It seems like a pretty good deal at $1.25 a week so I looked at some of the sample menus. I was particularly interested in the low carb menus but was disappointed that they featured quite a few items we don't eat and they don't seem to have a menu plan for kosher diets. We don't eat rabinically kosher but it's very close to our diet. Not that I am seriously considering signing up for e-Mealz but I know a few people who might really benefit from it. I already do what e-Mealz says they do but I don't spend hours on it like the commercial mentions. It takes me 10 to 20 minutes to create a frugal but healthy menu plan for two weeks and I think we do pretty well feeding two adults for $30 to $45 a week with some weeks coming in well under the $30.

Speaking of frugal food, it's the time of year when we normally begin garden planning but we haven't considered it yet because we don't know where we'll be when it's time to plant. We might be in an apartment and only have a few pots in which to plant but it's possible we'll find an affordable lot somewhere and be able to put in a full sized garden. I'm praying for the latter.

Tomorrow before I go to work I'm cooking a whole chicken. It will feed us dinner tomorrow night and several meals through the week, including my lunches at work. Yaaay for stretching chickens! We'll also eat some meatless meals which means more money will be added to the challenge!

Okay, I'm off to bed now. I'm finally tired and it's about 1 AM.

I took these pictures just a few days ago. Wow, everything is growing so well! We only lost 5 plants, all cucumbers, in the recent late frosts. Other than those, everything is doing just beautifully.



All four planting beds/tables



Tiny Sweet 100 tomatoes, just forming on the vine



Beets, beets, and more beets! I love 'em



Broccoli and beets



Bob helping with the potatoes planted in tires



More tomatoes



Squash plants which now have huge blossoms and squash just starting to turn yellow



And more tomatoes! After all, isn't the growing of tomatoes what a garden is really all about?

Oh yeah, to keep this sort of on a money track, I went to Ace Hardware today and bought a few couplings for an install DH and DSS are doing today. I spent $5.30.

It was so hot, still, and humid last night that we turned on the central air conditioner. We'd hoped to wait til May but it was ridiculously miserable so we caved in. However, I did turn it off when I went to bed so it didn't run all night. Self-kudos for not being lazy and letting it run the electric bill up too much.

I watered the container planted vegetables and herbs by the house this morning but I need to water the planting tables and get some leaves that I raked into piles into the wheelbarrow and take them to the leaf pyramid (called that because it's so large) out near the garden. Rain is forecasted, though, so I'm holding off in the hopes that nature will do the watering for me. I also plan to transplant more irises.

DH and DS14 are gone on jobs and they'll be gone most of the day, I think, so I'll vacuum, dust, and work on painting more of the bathroom door and frame around it.

Dinner tonight is plannedovers from last night's beef roast and gravy. There wasn't much left but I'm going to cut the beef into small pieces, make more gravy, season it all well and let it simmer awhile and serve it over wild rice with a salad and some Normandy Style vegetables.

Today should be a no spend day for me though DH will spend something while he's out, I'm sure.

While watering this morning, I thought of what DH says about gardens - their entire purpose is to make his tomato plants look good.

Anyway, here are some pics of our container vegetables, taken just a few minutes ago.



The cauliflower is doing very well in the containers we got for .50 each



And the green pepper and carrots are doing very well, too. I think they will need to be moved to a sunnier spot but so far, so good



More green pepper and some zucchini



An upside down tomato, happily hanging off the front porch



More tomatoes, one planted in an old Macintosh computer case



Yet another tomato plant, this one about to produce fruit



And last but not least, squash plants in buckets

Some of the tomato plants have fruit on them and we should have ripe tomatoes very soon!

So, this morning bright and early we walked outside to have some coffee and check on our plants. Here's a bit of what we saw:



This is bed 2. Right now all that's visible is broccoli but there's also fat man beans and a lot of other good stuff planted there.



This is a closer picture of the broccoli plants which are doing very well.



And here are the 24 tomato plants we got FREE at the local hardware store. Most of them had gotten a wee bit cold recently and had a bit of brown on them so they just gave them to us. We think we'll lose 2, maybe 3, of the 24 and that's not bad at all.



And here are the two beds we've planted so far. The tires in the background are stacked and used to grow tomatoes and squash.

And now for something completely different...I figure we all should
Make our own conspiracy theory at least once in our lifetime. Why not?