As The Workhouse Approaches....How To Do Everything To Avoid It, the Old Style Way

ceridwen

silvermaid wrote: »

Good morning,
I have just spent ages trying to catch up. Very interesting to read about calendula. Shall look for some seeds to sprinkle around.


Just heard that there are new laws in force about selling herbal remedies. Hope my response to the first sign of a cold in DH or me is not affected!

Anyhow, getting on time I think, Cheers m'dears, Silver

There IS method in my madness Silver;) - been reading about this for a whiles now - hence part of the reason for the interest in herbs:D;)

sammy_kaye18

Well I wrote you all a nice long message yesterday and apparently the MSE Forum god has snaffled it for himself because I cant find it now!

Congratulations Gailey on baby's arrival. Hope you and babe are both doing well.

I have a hectic weekend - so much for a nice relaxing one off!

Had a nice day out yesterday with my girlfriends - train cost me £6 to get to them, spent a nice day down Cardiff Bay, had a few games of bowling and then went to Nandos for lunch. Not very MSE but we haven't seen each other all together in about 2 years so it was a nice girly day out. We have decided to go camping/caravanning as a girly holiday soon so that should prove amusing!

Today however I have a festival of football to attend - from 10am until god knows when.
Tomorrow I have a Rugby Scrum - which is 9.30 until god knows when! So have a full weekend of sport and Im pretty sure the moto gp are on this weekend too so so much for peace and quiet.

Also I really am asking for good luck/lit candles vibes as I am about to put in bids for the three 3 bedroomed houses. Really hoping we get one of them. 2 are pretty much perfect for us and the third we can work with - to be honest though I dont care which one we get as they all look fab and they are all 3 bedroomed! So lots of vibes please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have a weekend baking once I get home today as we are all taking some bits and pieces for a picnic tomorrow at the rugby - well myself and another 3 mums because its an all day event and the kids will be starving and with 8 teams playing the food booths will be stupidly overpriced and stupidly busy! Im not saying mind - after every rugby match the kids are taken in the club, sat down and given a pasty and drink - free on the club as a sort of thank you for playing.

Also going to get cracking on my competitions - been a bit slack lately.

Right best be off, too much to do and only an hour or so to do it in!

sammy_kaye18

Also anyone with sky or Virgin.

Think its on DISCOVERY REAL TIME

It starts this SUNDAY at 9PM

Its called 'EXTREME COUPONING'. This is the first episodes description

EXTREME COUPONING (SEASON 1)

Episode 1
Meet the savvy shoppers who plan and plot their way to unbelievable savings. See how J'aime uses her coupons to get nearly $2000 worth of groceries for around her $100 budget.

and episode 2 is on at 9.30PM

Rebecca plans to fit all her party food needs into her modest monthly food budget. Jessica attempts to pull off 18 separate transactions to get over $600 worth of groceries.

May be worth a look

GreyQueen

:rotfl:Ooohh, I could get to like this long weekend malarkey. Yesterday I loafed around the homestead in the morning and walked up to the lottie after lunch to scrabble in the mixture of concrete and dust which someone has substituted for my lovely soil. The city was quieter than even a Sunday although I did find a Lidl open and dove in to buy one essential item (chocolate ).

Not sure what will be open today but need a few bits so will amble to the Scruffy Shopping Centre (the cheapy one not the actual city centre). Cheap is good and even harder to find.

On the plus side, the wild plants and the flowering trees in people's gardens are absolutely glorious and the sun shines on me however little there is in the bank, so I consider myself blessed.

sammy_kaye fingers crossed for your 3 bed house.

Milk bottle irrigation systems.

Well, I spent a couple of hours yesterday transplanting peas, which is a long time for a quick bit of trowel work, but I'm aiming to do a bit more now in order to do less later IYKWIM.

My lottie soil is silt-over-sand, incredibly light and freedraining, and although I have done a lot with manure and spent barley grains from the organic brewery, I still haven't altered it's essential characteristics in the 3 years I've had this plot. At the mo, we haven't had any proper rain for nearly 2 months and it's setting like concrete and, when you disturb it, fine dust is blowin' in the wind.

Not good for April, gawd knows what it'll be like in summer, so I have been trying to apply some brainpower to the problem, in such a way that costs little (preferably no) money and maximises resources and have arrived at Milk Bottle Irrigation, which I offer to you in case it might help someone else.

I started this last year with 4 pint plastic milk bottles, with little holes in their bases and the lower sides, buried alongside my courgettes. The idea is that they are "watering points" and you pour the water direct to the roots, not lost to evaporation. As the weather is getting so ridiculously dry, I decided to expand it past the squashes and into the beans. When I planted my broad beans weeks ago, I interplanted bottles with the seeds, again 4 pinters and vertically.

I was going to do the same with the peas then thought, waitaminute, pea roots are shallow. So, in a refinement, I am using 2 pinter bottles (lids on) laid on their side with handles uppermost. I've cut 3 sides of a rectangular hole in the upper side (and pushed the cut bit down inside, to make a porthole for the watering can nozzle) and put little holes in the lower side and bottom.

I did it all in the wrong order and made more work for myself than necessary but have got it together now and will be faster next time.

Dig or scrape a shallow trench where you want the peas to go. Lay the pre-prepped milk bottles in a row almost nose-to-tail along the middle. Transplant (or plant) the peas along either side of the bottles and fill in the earth. The bottles can be wholly or partially submerged, as long as you can see the porthole. Put up the sticks/ netting/ sting/ whatever yours climb. Fill the bottles with water and beam smugly.

:mad: Blasted mole has been back again and now has a bramble up his run; teach him to turf up my broad beans, grrr!

S'pose I really ought to do my ironing. Everyone have a lovely day now.

HoneyBee83

Morning lovely OSers!

As promised im keeping an eye on this thread (have to it fills up so quickly and i get left behind!).

Already posted on the Daily Thread but i thought i'd pop here too.
No DD this weekend so hopefully i can make today at least a NSD.
Lots of jobs around the house to be done and then im gonna crack on with the garden. I've potted my veggie seeds but have lots of room and pots left so i may double up and hopefully these will mature a little later than the others.
Will stick my Ipod on and i'll be away with the garden fairies :D
Will take pooch for a nice long walk too.
Right,need to get on once im moving there'll be no stopping me and i'll be grinning like a cheshire cat once i see the difference my bit of elbow grease has made! Its worth the effort in the end!! Really trying to save pennies so keeping busy will stop me popping to the shops!!

Have good days all x

Softstuff

I won! I won! I'm rich! I'm rich!

Well, not rich, but it's the best luck I've had in ages. Bought my monthly $2 scratchcard and we won $3..... so got a $3 scratchcard and won $20.... so got a $5 scratchcard, 3 bottles of wine (at $3 each) and 2 dvd rentals (with a buy one get one free voucher), came home, scratched it, and won $7! So wooohooo!

Also some idiot had thrown away a nice new looking pyrex casserole dish, a pack of 2 energizer AA batteries in their pack with a 2015 expiry and a huge immaculate granite pestle and mortar all in the communal bin. So rescued them and cleaned them up nicely. Unfortunately couldn't rescue the books that had been thrown in, otherwise I would have even if only to take them to the charity shop.

And finally, managed to catch some luck in the meat department at the supermarket just after they'd made the final reductions - got 3 chicken breasts in mango marinade, half a kilo turkey mince, half a kilo chicken mince, half a kilo chicken tenderloins and half a kilo chicken thighs all for under $12. Also managed reduced potatoes, sweet potatoes, leek, spring onion, spinach, pineapple, melon and courgettes!

I feel like my ship has come in :j

GreyQueen

Softstuff wrote: »

I won! I won! I'm rich! I'm rich!

Well, not rich, but it's the best luck I've had in ages. Bought my monthly $2 scratchcard and we won $3..... so got a $3 scratchcard and won $20.... so got a $5 scratchcard, 3 bottles of wine (at $3 each) and 2 dvd rentals (with a buy one get one free voucher), came home, scratched it, and won $7! So wooohooo!

Also some idiot had thrown away a nice new looking pyrex casserole dish, a pack of 2 energizer AA batteries in their pack with a 2015 expiry and a huge immaculate granite pestle and mortar all in the communal bin. So rescued them and cleaned them up nicely. Unfortunately couldn't rescue the books that had been thrown in, otherwise I would have even if only to take them to the charity shop.

And finally, managed to catch some luck in the meat department at the supermarket just after they'd made the final reductions - got 3 chicken breasts in mango marinade, half a kilo turkey mince, half a kilo chicken mince, half a kilo chicken tenderloins and half a kilo chicken thighs all for under $12. Also managed reduced potatoes, sweet potatoes, leek, spring onion, spinach, pineapple, melon and courgettes!

I feel like my ship has come in :j

:j:j:D Go Softstuff, go!! Yayy, the true and simple joy of a seriously reduced shopping trip and a bit of salvaging. Not to mentions prizes!

I lurve to pluck unconsidered trifles from the flow of life, clean them up and rehome them via the charity shop or friends in need. It's totally unbelievable what the uni students chuck out of their rented houses at the end of the academic year. I got a working Dyson DC01 one year and sold it for £35.....:rotfl:Not to mention some top dollar homewares for myself. Put them thru several sinkfuls of scalding hot water and soda crystals and good as new.

Wastefulness appals me on a daily basis but it does give those of us with Womble Genetics a chance at some good stuff.;)

charlies-aunt

GreyQueen wrote: »

:j:j:D Yayy, the true and simple joy of a seriously reduced shopping trip and a bit of salvaging. Not to mentions prizes!

I lurve to pluck unconsidered trifles from the flow of life, clean them up and rehome them via the charity shop or friends in need. .

Wastefulness appals me on a daily basis but it does give those of us with Womble Genetics a chance at some good stuff.;)

Softstuff and GreyQueen - echoed here! Go Girls!

To the embarassment of our DD's:o, I "freemantle" (freemantle is our private word for acquiring something that is of little/no intrinic value) lots of unconsidered trifles - a brand new brush head found at the side of the road was married with a binpicked brush handle. Two fancy pint Guiness glasses discarded by wandering Saturday night drinkers in the street outside my DH's workplace were sterilised and are in daily use. No skip with wood is safe as we have open wood burning fire through winter so I'll always have a quick forage for anything burnable especially if it suitable for chopping into sticks

I once found a slightly scufty but fully working mobile phone in the street - thrown down next to a load of packaging from a new phone - looked like someone had bought a new phone, swopped the SIM card over and tossed the 'old' one - to cries of 'Oh Mum Don't pick it up!'....said phone was freemantled & packaging binned.

I'm not proud and will accept offers of anything :rotfl: - if I can't make use of it myself - I make sure its clean and pass it on to friends or CS. Far too much perfectly good stuff goes to the tip!

Hardup_Hester

I've just been to Tesco to check on the whoopsies & got hot cross buns, 3 x 6 pack, 8p each, that's breakfast sorted for me for the next 3 weeks!

BitterAndTwisted

Womble Genetics! I love it.