Happy March - the lion is here.

My March started off like a lion. None of this gentle, lamb thing. March 1 brought me a busted pipe, a few inches of water in my furnace room and lots of wet stuff that had been in boxes on the ground. Clothes I'd been meaning to donate, now have to be rewashed and repacked. Hopefully this time, they will make it out the door to the donation center. Which reminds me that if you do it right and do it once, it will save you money. Sigh. I have to learn that.

March is here and my garden is not turned over yet so that is my goal today, even though it is slightly wet and cold out. It's warm enough to have started a garden already but I am a little behind. But I will persevere because I want to reap the financial gains of having a vegetable garden this summer.

I posted a link to a fun "how many meals can you get from one chicken" post on the Facebook page, do take a look, and maybe share your ideas there as well.

Happy March, dear readers.

Saving on Food: Grow your own

Growing up, I hated gardening. Mainly because the only exposure I had to it was not the planting or cultivating of all things beautiful, but rather, the gathering and disposal of a gardener's nemesis - weeds. My dad would inevitably call for me, show me a bucket and a weeder tool and point me to all the messy patches in the garden, and I would spend hours upon torturous hours, weeding.

So it didn't surprise me that when I became a teenager, I avoided the garden like the plague. Yes, there were still times my services were still required, like the time when my dad bought a truckload full of topsoil with manure and my brother and I had to spread it out all over the garden in the rain. Good times.

However once I got married, I found a love for growing vegetables. In my first condo, we won a lottery for a garden plot and I planted the heck out of that small plot - growing tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, salads, beans, peas, strawberries, carrots and more. My daughter grew up learning how to pull out little baby carrots and washing it with the garden hose before chomping down in its earthly, freshly picked goodness.

I've since moved houses, and now I'm in a house with a small yard so I do all my gardening in containers. I yearn for land that I can grow rows and rows of veggies, but my humble containers still make me happy each summer when I can send the kids out to pick fresh tomatoes, pick a fresh salad and more.

Being in the zone I am living in, I try to wait til March before planting but this year February's been so warm I think I'm going to start earlier, at least by turning over the soil and prepping it. I have a lot of work to do to bring the garden up from its winter dormancy. I'm hoping to grow enough to cover a big portion of our summer veggie needs this year. I'm dreaming of summer days of zucchini, beans, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, chives, carrots and lettuce...

more to come...