Review: Molly Saves in the Outdoors

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Spring! Although some of you already have greenery peeping up, we’re dreaming about it here with the help of Molly Saves Outdoors.   This month’s focus is on gardening, but there’s also a lot for those of us who are still thawing chicken water, making snow ice cream, and skating in the fields.

Discussions of gardening would hardly be complete without mentioning herb gardens.  “Back to the Basics” is all about basil:  growing it, harvesting it, and cooking with it.

This month’s “Forms and Printables” are especially for gardeners.  Whether you plant an acre or make do with a balcony, Molly has a lot of information as well as some helpful printables to share.

Frugal gardening involves making compost.  Eleanor Joyce shares ideas about compost pails as well as other ways to up-cycle trash, from milk jug curtains to new outdoor uses for cans and jars.

Molly’s “Meal of the Month” features roasted cauliflower with raisins!  I’ve never heard of that before, but it sounds delicious.

I have an herb garden, and each year is an opportunity to learn more.  Molly walks us, step-by-step, through the basics of starting a potted herb garden.  Herb gardens are a fragrant and delicious way to save money, especially if you preserve the herbs for winter use.  For those of us still in the cold, it’s wonderful just seeing all the how-to pictures filled with greenery.

In “Gardening with Heirloom Seeds,” Sharra discusses the many benefits, including frugality, of using heirloom seeds.  Gardening naturally provides one surprise after another, as her family discovered one spring.  One caution:  if you choose heirloom seeds, be sure you understand disease prevention and crop rotation, since these seeds are often not disease resistant.

If you’re considering adopting a pet, you absolutely must read Dr. Rule’s article about the joys and pitfalls of pet rescuing.  It will inform you and could save your family both money and heartache.  “Rescue Carefully” may well be the most valuable article this month.

This month’s “Tightwad Training Camp” is all about understanding and using check registers.  Children and teens (and moms) are shown exactly how to balance a check book, with detailed examples.

A rolling draft dodger, designed to deal with the special charms of an old, old farmhouse, shows just what you can do when faced with an unusual challenge:  tackle it head-on, with creativity and an eye open to God’s work for us.  Once again Sharon takes us from trash to class.   

We can’t cure the common cold, but we can do a lot to prevent it and treat it.  Molly shares frugal common-sense tips.  And then, just in case we want some pampering, she shares three simple but luxurious bath scrub recipes.

Mega Cooking by Jill Bond has helped many families prepare meals ahead of time.  Molly outlines the book in some detail.  For those families whose pots are large enough and whose appetites are small enough to permit cooking more than one meal at a time, freezer cooking is one thing that can make a huge dent in the budget.  Inspired by the concept, I’m planning to make my own gluten-free bread mixes, and I’ve ordered the book from the library.

This month’s “Inspiration” brought a sparkle to my eyes.  It contained not just one, but two stories of ordinary women, just following their hearts, who unexpectedly started businesses. Once again I get the message that there’s something special about developing your unique gifts.  In fact, doing so might even become a source of income, if you ever need one. 

And here are two Molly quotes for the month:

“There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.” ~ Mirabel Osler

“The air was fragrant with a thousand trodden aromatic herbs, with fields of lavender, and with the brightest roses blushing in tufts all over the meadows…” ~ William Cullen Bryant

Once again, this is another great Digest, and I feel so privileged to be able to tell you about it. You can get it here.  Remember, if you sign up for a Molly Membership (you can cancel anytime), you get the Digest and a whole lot more for even less than the Digest by itself.

Disclosure I received a complimentary download of Molly’s March Money-Saving Digest in order to give you my honest opinion of it.

For more great tips, see Works for Me Wednesday, Thrifty Thursday, and Frugal Friday.