Our first freeze and buy now, bill me later

The temperature is supposed to hit 32 tonight in town, which means it may even get into the 20s here at home.  I have two choices with the garden, I can either cover everything up or I can pull everything up.  I decided to pull everything up. 

Covering the rows would be a good idea.  It would keep everything a few degrees warmer, and the plastic would warm the soil and crops during the day as well.  But the crops I'm growing right now that would be affected by the cold are eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, and peppers.  I have about 30 eggplants on the five plants and buckets of tomatoes.  I'm probably not going to get any more zucchini this season, even if I protected the plants from the freeze.   I picked my five small zucchini. I decided to pull up the eggplant and cut the tomato plants off right at the ground.  I tied a cord around each plant and hung them upside down in the garage.  The garage will stay around 50.  The fruit will ripen as the plants die.  I still had two pepper plants growing but I forgot to pull them up.  Now it's dark and cold and I just don't care that much. 

I'd have a different attitude if the SHTF tomorrow.  I'd be pissed off at myself for leaving those two plants and not going out to retrieve them.  They could be transplanted into a pot and grown indoors.  If it doesn't freeze and kill them tonight I'll pot them up tomorrow. 

We've had rain two nights in a row now.  I hung laundry up yesterday afternoon and they finally dried around 5:00 this afternoon....just in time for another load to get hung on the line.  The grand kids want to know when I'm just going to put the clothes into the drier.  I told them when it's foggy.  I tried explaining that it costs about a dollar for each load but they just aren't getting the concept.  They also wanted to know when I was going to turn the heater on in the house.  I told them a couple days before Thanksgiving when we have company.  Until then, put on an extra blanket if you are cold.  It can cost up to $10 a day to run the heater.  If they aren't interested in bringing in wood to run the wood stove on the weekends when I'm home to keep it going then they will just have to deal with a cold house. 

The next door neighbor gave Girl a couple of National Geographic magazines.  Girl read out loud about the elephant slaughter for their tusks.  She wasn't quite getting what was going on so I had to explain about bad guys killing the elephants just for their tusks.  Now if they were using the entire elephant, then I wouldn't have the same problem with it as killing them, taking the tusks and letting them rot.  There was a coupon in the magazine for National Geographic for kids.  Only $15.  Girl told me that she had some mail to send out.  What?  You don't have the money.  She said the postcard said that you could enclose the money or they can bill you.  She checked that they could bill her.  Do you have the money in your room?  No??  You can't buy something if you don't have the money.  She said she'd earn it by the time the bill came in.  No!  You earn it now.  You are not allowed to buy anything if you don't have the money up front.  Do you understand?  But why?  Because, you will ruin your life if you always try to play catch-up and pay the bills when they come in with money you don't have.  I'm half expecting her to put the postcard in the mail anyway.  We will see if the magazine shows up here.

Tomorrow is Veteran's Day.  Not Monday, like everyone thinks.  That's just a day off work in honor of the hard working military who isn't getting the day off.  Dad served.  One of my brothers and one of my sisters served.  Army daughter (that's easy to figure out) and son served.  I was thinking about joining the marines right out of high school.  In a way I wish I had served the country in the military, but now, I'm glad I didn't because the life I have now would not have been my life.  Instead, I'll just have to honor the rest of the family and everyone else who has served our country.  Thank you.