Still vacationing, friends, readers, and fellow cheapskates. (That’s me in the yellow ocean kayak.) Look for more posts when I begin processing my now-burgeoning tomatoes! Thanks, as ever, for your support and good cheer.
Read moreSo this afternoon, following a morning of errands, I tackled the yard again: grass-cutting, edging, cleaning off the sidewalk, and then weeding, till my clothes were completely soaked with sweat. I mean, even my socks. And my old yard sneakers. Tomatoes have rocketed up and out, putting on green fruit like crazy, necessitating some tucking-in […]
Read moreInspired by today’s ride through a perfect Northeast Iowa summer evening, things I learn and relearn from my simple old machine: 1) If I just get started, it will get easier from there. This applies to everything. 2) From a bike, the world wakes up my senses: flowering vetch, wild lilies, Queen Anne’s lace, black-eyed […]
Read moreThis is the whole manuscript of my novel-under-revision, printed out in 8-point type and hung up on my guest-bedroom wall. (Suitably redneck for my Alabama origins, the duct tape sticks to plaster where Scotch tape won’t.) “So that’s how novelists work,” said a friend on seeing this picture. Well, I don’t know about other novelists […]
Read moreSo I suppose it was inevitable: when a friend and fellow backyard-gardener told me last week that she and her husband and toddler are moving into a new house on the other side of town with a large yard and a somewhat dilapidated pre-existing chicken setup, I immediately thought: This is the chicken-raising chance I’ve […]
Read moreOfficial information from the credit counseling firm, as of today: Original Balance: $22,885.01 Approx Current Balance: Debt Free Total Debt Paid Off: $22,885.01 Last Payment Received: 7/7/2011 Last Payment Amount: $195.18 Next Payment Due: Debt Free Next Payment Amount: N/A
Read moreWhat you see here is the result of my past couple blogging-less weeks of garden work: several big and long-planned projects including the construction, priming, and painting of a new fence (to the far right, now completely enclosing the yard – other people built it and primed it, I painted it); weeding everything and trucking […]
Read moreSaw a kid dismally picking weeds out of a crack by a curb (obviously assigned by parent or other authority) and remembered a great FREE and ecologically sound tip for controlling those little bitty weeds that come up through cracks in pavement: boiling water. I used what was left in my canning pot to kill […]
Read moreOr, two ways of looking at a lawn. (With another glass of wine I might be able to manage the standard thirteen….) Mower A: Mower B: Mower A: used, gas-powered Craftsman gifted to me by my brother-in-law, then traveled by circuitous routes involving broken promises of mower transit in an SUV by male family members […]
Read moreIn the words of the great Candi Staton, self-preservation is what’s really going on today. Or what went on yesterday, for the first time ever in the Cheapskate Intellectual kitchen. But it won’t be the last. Following the directions in the super-easy and super-fun book CANNING FOR A NEW GENERATION, I rendered a colander full […]
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