Frugal living thoughts and ideas

First Monday of the new year. Reading over some of the groups and lists I am on a re occurring thought is frugality verses just being cheap.


The goal I would like to keep pursuing is to live as well as we can, on the resources that are available to us. That includes going out for the odd lunch with Dh or my friends and family. Taking the odd trip to see family, and to enjoy some of those things that require some finances other than just what is needed to survive.


We don't recycle as much as in some places, but then what do you do with all the things you recycle? Here many of the items end up in the dump. However that being said. i compost, and take many things to Gleaners. Gleaners is our local thrift shop. Here in Canada you do not get a tax receipt for donations. But all the money made at Gleaners .after expenses to keep the store going, goes to our local Food bank. The workers at Gleaners are volunteers. So whether you are donating goods, or buying you know that you are helping someone as well as yourself. Another neighbours son is taking bottles, cans, and juice containers to town several times a year for extra spending money. I save mine and drop them off in their driveway whenever I get a garbage bag full. That at least recycles them and someone benefits a little.


We are also on free cycle. I personally only posted there once, and that time the site was going through a change of owners, and my post never got posted. So how well our free cycle actually works I still have to learn.


I did learn though that if you let your friends know you are looking for something you'd better have a spot for extras! I put the word out that I wanted a new greenhouse ( my previous one blew away in a wind storm!)
Dh had purchased an8 by 12, 2x4 wooden frame for a car port for 35$. I needed to get glass and a door. Well, within a week I had all I needed, including a glass door. several glass windows with sliders so they can be opened in the hot weather and 1 very long window with louvers so that it can be opened and the windows open out on an angle. I think it will work very well for the hot, hot days of summer. I'd like the louvers to be put on the roof, but will it be water tight?



Another thought sparked by reading one of my groups. What could you do with a Dollar? The poster went on to say she would spend it on garden seeds and what she would plant and how much you could expect to harvest from that amount of seed. I thought that she would get very good value. She could get 10 packets of seed for $1. Here the best I saw last year was 4 packets of seed for $1. even that would give wonderful returns . I think some lettus and green onions, carrots and zucchini would be my pick from 4 packets. By early summer I can hardly wait for fresh lettus. If you try and eat locally, and eat by season greens are something you long for by spring. I usually am out early getting new dandelion greens for salad and sandwiches as soon as I see them in spring. I plant Chard and beets too. but they come later in the season. But I love the beet tops as much or more than the beet roots. A very efficient plant for growing so much is edible.
What about free plants? That's a better price. Let's see what I have gotten and traded for free. Mostly perennials. Like raspberries, strawberry, gooseberry, red current, and black current, and black berries ( If I didn't kill it last year ), and rhubarb. Then there's the horseradish , Jerusalem artichokes ( is that a blessing or a curse?????) chives, sage, and Lovage and perennial onions ( when they were given to me they were called Egyptian Onions that's when I lived in Northern BC, then we moved south and they were Called Yukon onions ???? So I guess where ever you live and you dream of some other place, that's where the onions must come from LOL). Not to mention all the flowers that I have been given and traded with friends. Each flower has a memory, so and so gave me this from their flower bed, I got this when....... those are things you can't put a price on ..... the good feelings you get from the memories.
Last year I bit the Bullet and trough out all my old seeds. i hadn't put dates on them and The number of seed packets was getting over whelming. This year as I buy them they are getting dated. That way I'll know when they are getting too old. Growing season is too short to waste time planting seeds that are too old to grow. Most often there are far more seeds in a package than you need to plant for 1 years harvest. I mean really how many zucchini do you need????? I have had years when I've had 4 plants and taken 5 gallon pails to my friends every 3 days. One friend said she'd take all my extras for herself and her DIL. That lasted only 6 pails till she said enough! But I love a few for Zesty Zucchini Relish. Oh, I love that stuff. But if we get an extra long hot summer we get over run with the lovely things.

I want to go outside now and pull snow off the carport. DH has finnished ploughing so I can get around the carport to pull the snow. Ugh, enough snow already. If April Showers Bring May Flowers then what does January Snow bring??????????