Thursday, June 4, 2009

Credit Experiment: Update 1

Bills and rent have consumed the entirety of May's pay. Courtney is also out of money. The situation is... well, "dire" would be a melodramatic overstatement, but "inconvenient" fails to capture the uncomfortable feeling of alarm I experience at being unable to buy food. It is true that food supplies here at home are adequate for the time being, but payday is a week away and I am unsure if we will be eating in a manner one could reasonably describe as "well" by the time we can afford another trip to the grocery store.

On the upside, I just came in from the garden, and there are cornstalks popping up in the garden in a great big hurry. The ones that got a little out of line during planting were lifting up the landscaping cloth*! The potatoes are coming along as well, and there is a lot of promise in broccoli, kale, zucchini, onions, and if I'm lucky, a few more crops of leaves in some chard plants that bolted and overwintered but nonetheless continue to survive. Insofar as greater self-sufficiency is helpful in spending less, all this is excellent news - though probably not immediately useful for at least a month in most cases, two or three in some.

* - While generally entirely organic, hand-made, recycled, etc., our garden suffers from a severe pest problem in the form of the neighbors' cats, who really seem to enjoy digging up seedlings and shitting on them, thus killing our plants, creating a very serious health hazard, and generally adding insult to injury. Please, please, please, friends, keep your cats indoors or at least confined by an electronic "fence" system. When outdoors, they're extremely destructive to wildlife, they're a major nuisance to your neighbors, and they're in constant danger from dogs and cars and who knows what else. If you think they suffer from being confined to the house, you should see what they do to the small animals they catch, and what will happen to them if and when they finally get run over. Or shot. They're a harmful invasive species in the truest sense. Keep them inside.

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