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Feeling like Helpful Heloise of the Apocolypse, I'm going to talk about Victory Gardens today.

I was fortunate enough to be raised by my parents and grandparents on both sides. That meant I was exposed to many stories that most people haven't heard first-hand. The most prolific storyteller was my father's mother, who still vividly remembered The Depression and World War 2, and told me many stories about that time.

She remembered being the only child (of a family of eight) in New York state that could find work. Every evening she would wash out the only pair of panties and the only bra that she owned. Although they were often damp in the morning, hygiene was more important to her than comfort. She represented the entire family, her father was the Town Drunk, and she was their only way to stay alive. She worked as a telephone operator.

Then she met my grandfather.

The United States was just coming out of the depression, all was looking up, and suddenly WWII was declared.

Grandpa couldn't make it into the military due to a physical problem of some sort (I believe it was flat feet), so he became one of the town's marshals in charge of enforcing citizen compliance. That meant he had to make sure that everyone blacked out their windows during practice air raids, as well as making sure no one was hoarding anything during a time that the soldiers needed it more.

Almost everything was rationed. Meat, salt, sugar, vegetables, butter, pantyhose, extra metal, and other things were hard to find because they were going overseas to our troops. It was during this time that margarine was invented as a butter substitute. People learned creative ways to make baked goods with very little standard ingredients (I still have some of those recipes).

And people planted Victory Gardens.

It now looks as if we'll need to plant them once again. Experts are recommending that we begin them now. Why? Well, we're in a recession. Granted that's not a depression and we hope it won't grow into one, but there's no getting around the fact that our economy is struggling.

In addition to that, we have flooding taking place in the Midwest, which is already boosting food prices.

The time to plant is NOW.

Just as they did in WWII, we can plant our Victory Garden in a variety of places. If you live in an apartment or a condo, you will probably have no access to tillable land. You could located your garden on the rooftop if you can't find space below (make sure your rooftop is designed to take on the load of foot

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