This and That

September is coming to a close and fall has begun but thankfully we've been given a reprieve albeit temporarily from cooler temperatures and precipitation. The weekend has been a beautifully warm and sunny one and has given us a chance to bring our vegetable garden to a close. We're not one of those families that enjoys 'working' on the weekends tinkering around the house with chores or fix it projects so believe me we like making things as simple and easy as possible. Luckily this year the garden is relatively painless in cleaning up. Something we'd worked hard at attempting to achieve through trial and error these past few years.
The dying tomato vines easily pull from the soil and weeds are still at a minimum compared to previous years. The cages and stakes looking a little more worn after 3 years use but still quite able to work again next year. The leftover greenery will fill the compost bin to the brim but we'll keep a few of the green peppers and jalapeno's in the ground since they are still attempting to bloom. The green peppers were atrocious this year really. Blooming entirely too late and now will probably just rot on the vine instead of produce due to sporadic temperature changes we've been having on and off all summer. Large amounts of rain we'd suffered early on didn't make any of our garden over abundant in it's harvest for 2008. But considering the stress it'd been under I'm quite happy we got enough tomato's for quite a few batches of salsa and BLT suppers. Next year I'm going to try and remember to not put weed preventer down BEFORE I want to plant vegetable seeds! What a disaster that was. And cucumber plants from the garden center really don't transplant well for me. I've always done seed in the past without any trouble but I screwed myself out of that one on accident this time around. Luckily mother has had a million of them to share with us and friends at work. It would've been nice to have had radishes though. I love radishes! And the grocery store has them at such a huge price that I cannot bring myself to buy them except occasionally.
Speaking of grocery prices. I dread these days even going there! Nothing and I mean NOTHING is priced reasonably anymore. I can't get out of the store without spending$60 bucks and those on trips where I just pick up a few things to supplement what we still have at home. To spend $150 for 2 weeks groceries these days and still have to supplement with perishables like milk and vegetables is ridiculous!

The economy is tough for all of us right now and I fear it's not going to improve anytime soon. I do hope people vote in the upcoming election and this time it doesn't turn out like it did the last. I thought for sure people would NOT vote again for Bush's re-election after the way things had been going but surprisingly they did and look where that's gotten us now. I'm hoping for a change. A change for the better this time and the start of a new era. We shall see though. I'm not holding my breath just in case I'm once again floored by the lack of courage to try something new and fresh. The debates have been very interesting and I look forward to seeing more of their exchange. I really hope they allow people sitting on the fence to truly see who is the best choice for change. And not to just stick their head in the sand and give up or lazily just keep doing what they've always done out of loyalty rather then put in the time to really figure out who is going to lead us out of this mess!