Watering the
World
I am always looking for ways to save money though I don’t often
use coupons except for yesterday while we were shopping. My husband was
determined to use all of the coupons that a supermarket had given us as long as
they were for products that we used.
Most of the time we can’t use coupons as we use fresh produce and fresh
seafood or chicken and turkey preferring to cook so we can regulate the sodium,
sugar and additional things that are generally found in the prepackaged
foods. If we can’t spell or pronounce
the words, we figure that it probably should not go into our bodies without a
written prescription from a licensed doctor or dietitian.
No, we are not purists. I can testify to that having just eaten
spoonfuls of chocolate chip cookie dough followed by several cookies to help
chase them down my gullet. But we did
grind oatmeal to use instead of having all white flour in the recipe with whole
wheat pastry flour as well as some of the regular white flour in the
cookies. Plus walnuts, chocolate chips
and real butter. I will stop here with
what we do within the mixing and baking but the cookie recipe is not a secret
one. At least it is not one that a spy
will hang around my windows in hope that we will recite the recipe out loud,
“Did you put the cup of ground oatmeal in? Did you remember the extra flour?
How hot did you say the oven was?” Nope,
no secrets here, just keep on walking by.
I can easily say that we are
lucky and don’t have to skimp on the food bill as we cook our meals from
scratch with dry beans, lentils, rice, etc.
So what is a girl to do with trying to find ways to save money? Cut back
on our allowances which we get every two weeks?
Twenty dollars to each of us does not seem unreasonable. My husband will
testify to that. About twenty-five years
ago, he came to me and asked for an allowance, he said that he did not care how
I did it but he wanted ten dollars every payday. I said, “Okay.” About two years ago, I raised his allowance to
twenty dollars every payday. Generally, I use mine for the Farmer’s Market,
though earlier this year I used my twenty dollars for payments on a new purse
that I bought at a friend’s shop here in our town. I have a drawer for my desires at her place
which by the way is filled with lovely lingerie, slippers, pearls, earrings and
limited amount of wonderful purses. I have
a total of four now. Two are tiny things to fit into the bigger purses that I
already have. Two of the other purses from her shop are pieces of art with
beautiful artwork on the outside. My attitude about works of art is to have
them if I like them and if they are purses.
Well, back to the idea of saving
money. I have decided that one way that
I could cut back was on the water bill which has gained momentum and seems to
be increasing as the summer season continues with hotter days than we are use
to here on the Oregon central coast. I
had increased the little pots of potatoes that I have growing on the porch plus
the mystery plant that volunteered growing in the pot with the potatoes. Therefore, we used more water to water the
potatoes morning, noon and night to help my little crop grow. The mystery plant, well, we are waiting to
find out, but the little yellow blossoms seem to be attracting honey bees so
that is a definite plus.
One morning as my husband was
taking his bath I announced to him that I would like him to save the bathwater
for the roses, the butterfly bush and the lilac tree. He worried about the soap in the water but I
let him know that since we did not use much soap that it would not be a problem
on those plants but we would need to use the pure water for the potatoes and
the mystery plant (it is looking more and more like a cucumber plant). How to get the water to the roses, the
butterfly bush and the lilac tree was not a problem as I was planning on
hauling it out myself.
I want to applaud my husband for
his great support in the various odd things that I seem to do to fill up our
lives on a day to day basis. Therefore,
I was not too surprised to hear yelps coming from our bathroom on Sunday just a
bit of concern though I had a fairly good idea of what I would find when I ran
to the bathroom. I was right, as a rule,
I generally am right that is. As I went
into the bathroom, my very naked cold wet husband was sponging off in the very
cold water from our morning baths. It was the water that was waiting for me to
drag out to the plants in the yard. He
had just finished mowing the yard and had worked out a really nice sweat in the hot
afternoon and really need a nice hot relaxing bath but what he got was a very
cold tub of water. He is my hero. A cold water hero but a hero nevertheless.
So far, it seems to be working as I pour out the water from the tub into a pan or large bowl and trudge out the back
or front door with my water. The roses
are looking good with lots of new buds coming on. The water in the kitchen that we catch from
rinsing fruit, lettuce, and other vegetables goes to the potatoes and the
possible cucumber or squash plant. At
the rate that I am going I will be watering the world.
Fantastic!
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