Update on the Green/Frugal Experiment

We've had an uphill battle with the garden. Upon returning home from our Memorial Day trip, we discovered that something (probably a rabbit) had taken upon itself to eat the heads off of every one of the tomato seedlings we had planted and a couple of the pepper plants. We could barely tell that anything had even been planted. On top of this, there was evidence of bugs chewing holes into some of the other pepper leaves, and one of our zucchini plants decided to keel over and die. Overall, the ground also looked way too dry and was probably inhibiting growth.

So, this past week, I spent my days bringing in reinforcements. I tilled the garden area again, adding compost & manure as well as some organic supplemental soil. I planted more tomatoes, this time covering each one with their own personal force-field. I planted more peppers, and then sprayed everything with an environmentally-friendly spray that basically keeps animals away because they don't like the smell (kind of smells like rotten eggs). Now, I think we're finally making some progress. Our cucumbers and yellow squash are beginning to flower, the other plants are getting used to the sun, and we've had some good rain over the last couple days. We may even have some lettuce coming out of the ground as well!

In other news, Amber and I are coming up with new and innovative ways to save money. One way is through CVS's "Extra Care Bucks" program. There are numerous people out there who blog on this topic, but essentially it works like this: each month, CVS has products that, when purchased with your CVS member card, give you a coupon of the same amount of the product. In other words, the product is virtually free, and then when combined with other manufacturer's coupons and other CVS discounts, people have figured out ways to actually make money off this program by only purchasing the items that give the biggest bang for the buck. Once you put in $15-20 to purchase your first items with "ECBs," as long as you keep purchasing things that give you more of them, you basically pay nothing in your next visits if you add things up right. We've tried it several times, and not only is it a way to get things for really cheap that will be put to use at some point (even if it means stocking up on 1500 q-tips at the moment!), it's also kind of fun to see how much you can get for the least amount of money. And since there's a CVS a block from our house, we don't even have to pay gas to get there!