Getting Started on Our Victory Garden

Making Do in Hard Times

Yesterday my husband Dave and I tried to get prepared for our visit from Ruby de Luna of KUOW. She had phoned and asked if she could be present when we began to create our Victory Over the Recession vegetable garden. Although the recession made us commit to growing vegetables this year, it is something that we’d talked about for years. We even had a bit of a foundation lain in the form of a shallow box of two by sixes that a previous owner had used in the exact place we chose. Our yard is shaded by many Doug firs, but the unused space behind the garage gets lots of sun in the summer. Ruby wanted sounds and I wanted a deeper box so we went to Home Depot and purchased cedar two by sixes to double the depth of our box.

Ruby arrived at 11:30 AM. KUOW is going in multiple rooms of our house all day every day so I feel as though the staff members are friends and have developed pictures in my mind of how each looks. Ruby is as beautiful as her name and more beautiful than I pictured in my mind and is shown here at work. She isn’t bigger than a minute, but refused help with her equipment. We chatted a bit while she set up her equipment and discovered that she knows my brother Tim Haeck of KIRO radio.

While Dave measured and sawed the pieces of wood Ruby captured the sounds of his work and our grandson Gabriel helping GrandDave attach the new wood to the existing frame. When the box was completed we took Ruby in the house to warm up and she interviewed us about how the recession is impacting our family of six.

In all honesty, we know that there are people who are suffering much more than we are. So far ours is more the anxiety of what the future holds than what is happening now. We are a thrifty lot by nature and so far the recession has only effected us in theory since Dave will likely lose his job at Seattle Flight Service sometime in the next year and lay-offs in the Peninsula School District are likely. I am not likely to be laid-off, but my job may look different next year because of the potential loss of 50-75 clerical staff and who knows how many certified.

So we continue to save money however we can, always happy to learn new ways to do that. You can bet that anything I discover will be shared here!

Making Do in Hard Times

My husband frequently clips interesting articles and cartoons from newspapers and magazines. He generally leaves the cartoons on the refrigerator and the articles on the banister on the catwalk that runs between his den and our bedroom. Last night, because I was still awake when he came home from work he brought a little snippet from Time Magazine into the bedroom and placed it on my computer table. I was too engrossed in "Blazing Saddles" to pay close attention, but this morning took the time to check out the scrap he’d given me.

The little nugget that my husband had clipped from the magazine was a small sidebar of information on websites for penny pinchers like me. There were three listed with brief descriptions. Wisebread.com is a group blog with the slogan “Living large on a small budget.” They share advice from their own lives and link to penny-conscious personal finance advice around the Web. Frugaldad.com centered on making the hard choices of finances. “Spend less than you make,” he writes, “save money for a rainy day; live debt-free.”

I’ve saved my favorite for last. Frugalliving.about.com. When I arrived I went to the section on couponing. I’ve written before about my penchant for couponing and am always looking for tips to do better. If you’re new to couponing there’s a wealth of information that took me years to figure out and I suggest giving the tips a look-see. What got my spendthrift juices running was a link to organic coupons. It is hard to buy organic in these economic times and seldom are there coupons for organic products in the Sunday newspaper. I was excited to find links to print products from Organic Valley, Hain, Brown Cow, and many more.

Whether or not you are attempting to live organic or green during this recession, Frugal Living is well worth the time to see what tips they have for making those pennies scream.

Finally, we are preparing to put in a small Victory over the Recession Garden this year. Every year we’ve said we were going to do it and every year our tendency for procrastination has let another growing season slip away with the area behind our garage left barren. This year we have a stick poking us in the backside. On whim I answered an email from KUOW about a new feature of their website called “Insight.” Readers well know my predisposition for giving my opinion so I signed up and answered a few questions. When it came to the section about what we were doing to make it during the recession I mentioned our intention to put in a vegetable garden. Lo and behold I received a phone call from Ruby de Luna! Could she come and interview us while we put in our garden? Gulp. Time for us to put our money—er shovel—where our/my mouth was.

When I told my husband he rolled his eyes and said, “Now why would she want to do that? Does she know we don’t know what we’re doing?”

“Yes,” I said. "I think that’s kind of the point. She wants to get the sound of you building the garden boxes and me telling you what to do.” More eye rolling.

“When she coming?”

“Tuesday.”

So we are off to get more lumber to make our garden box deeper. Stay tuned for an account with our brush with fame.