Before diving into this week’s blog post, I need to correct something I said last week. I mentioned that I was switching to my word processor (Which is Microsoft Office Word 2010) because it has a blog feature, and it also has autosave. While what I said was correct, the implication that Blogger does NOT have autosave was most definitely incorrect. It certainly does. I just was up late that night and not thinking very clearly.
All my previous posts were submitted using the web interface that is a part of Blogger, and last week was the first time I submitted using MSWord. I have to say I prefer using Word. The online interface gets the job done, but I find it to be very clunky. The box where you edit your text is too small for my taste. I like to see much more of what I am working on at the same time. Formatting also seems to be klunky.
Okay, Now To This Week
As you may have guessed from the title, I don’t really have anything to report on the family garden plans, this week. It’s January, and it’s in the 60’s here. As I said previously, we moved from Idaho to Alabama about five years ago. This is the first January I’ve seen here that it hasn’t been freezing. Not that I’m complaining, but I wonder what this bodes for the rest of the year. We actually have trees that think it’s Spring. New leaves are budding. Maybe we should plant early? Of course, there’s still plenty of “Winter” left on the calendar for a freeze to happen. And it hasn’t been consistently warm, anyway. We’ve been on a temperature roller coaster the past few weeks. Down near freezing for two or three days, then back to Spring for a few. Today it’s been stormy. We’ve had a couple thunderstorms roll through this morning, and we were even under a tornado watch until noon. Although tornadoes can happen anytime, the season for them doesn’t typically begin here until March, when the weather normally starts to warm up.
Since there’s nothing new to report on our garden, I thought I would post some general information regarding gardening in general. My wife and I are people who believe in striving to be prepared for emergencies. That’s all too often easier said than done, but we try. I’ve talked to people who have the attitude that if something happens they’ll rely on the fact that they live close to help and resources, so “being prepared” in the traditional sense is something done but whack-jobs who are living in the past. Personally, I may be a whack-job (please don’t go confirming that with people who know me), but I try to be one who learns from the past. Years ago, I took a freshman-level history class in which the professor once remarked, “History does NOT repeat itself.” I did not ask him to explain himself, but I have given the notion some thought over the years. While it may be true in the literal sense (after all, World War I isn’t going to happen again), historical patterns DO repeat themselves (other world wars will likely occur… oh wait, we’ve already HAD World War II, hmmm…)
If we should ever find ourselves without the ability to purchase food (or otherwise to obtain it from someone else) it’ll take us longer to starve if we have food growing in our backyard than if we didn’t. If we grow more than we need of something, it also gives us the opportunity to preserve it for the future, such as by canning, freezing, or drying. “What if there’s no power? Your frozens will thaw out and in a short time spoil.” True, but not all circumstances would cause power failure. That’s why we use a variety of storage methods. The point is to have food stored. Also, the extra food comes in handy when someone else is in need.
Another reason we have decided to garden is for health reasons. In the past few years, I have found it necessary for me to be very careful with my diet. I’m won’t delve into the details right now, but vegetables are a highly necessary things for me, and it can be quite a bit cheaper to grow them yourself than to purchase them in the store, depending on the vegetables you choose to grow. One of my favorites is spinach, and our local supermarkets don’t sell it in bunches the way I’ve seen it in other places. You can only buy the packaged spinach, and I know that over time I can grow it cheaper than they sell it for.
Uhhh, I Mean Last Week
I wrote the above post last week, but never posted it because it wasn’t finished, and I never got a chance to finish during the week. So I’m just going to post it now and start on this week’s post!
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