Best wellyboot forward. Pips frugal edible garden adventures.

Pippilongstocking

Well I'm happy to help you know that. We can do a chin wag anytime my lovely. How exciting.

Four snowdrops, my lovely, does not a snowdrop garden grow. Well not immediately.

And they hate being soggy, I've found out.

I picked a garden on its ability to have chickens so I absolutly concur.

And speaking of chickens, here's the porridge beaks themselves.

Karmacat

Oh they're gorgeous!

Pippi, now that my side border to my house has been "mulched" by stones properly, and doesn't have too-big Japanese anemones growing all over it, there are lots of snowdrops there that finally have a chance to grow - a couple of dozen, I'm happy to report!

I still have chicken envy tho

Glad to hear you can charge the laptop lead - they sound like a good employer.

Pippilongstocking

THanks KC your garden sounds lovely.

And yes they are good and I have chicken envy too

Done two paid hours today. As i'm now working 4 days a week, I think thats enough for today at the mo as I've stuff to do later and meetings tomorrow.

Paid by both jobs, must pay some to cards etc.

And must actually you know make a list and move.

Pippilongstocking

Retreiving food spends from cards.

45.03 chinese supermarket and other bits that weekend to prop up the stores
9.30 sainsbugs store cupboard stuff and brekkie
14.11 pet food etc B?M and stuff for lunches for himself
Co-op reduced 6.49
morrisons 21.10 (meat/fish)
Boots norweigen face cream 3.83

Petrol £22
18.06

No driving days this month so far 5
No spend days this month so far 6

Now I feel more on track. Must add this lot up

£99.86 food spends/£200
£40.06 petrol/£100

Pippilongstocking

Still throwing all of new wages (and some of old wages) at card to clear holiday spends, making progress on that.

£400 went today. Will pay for lift passes.

If I can keep this job for long enough I can start to save for next holiday eh.

Keep pondering food spends and know I can do better now that I'm in a routine and we're both taking packed lunches.

Sadly (greatly) we're still in honeymoon period so doing lots of nice eating at home.

Meal plan for this week looks/looked thus.

Sat - fish olives with reduced smoked salmon and mr A basa, tatties from the giant bag £5 for hugest farm bag) and tomatoes. Bought nice bread from sainsbugs as Mr Me's mum came to stay, which she ate with most of a block of butter.

Sun - chinese dumpling feast - noodle soup and leftover rice turned into fried rice with yummy bits in it. Dumplings are 2.88 for a bag so we've a few different sorts in the freezer - they're yummy highly recommend them.

Mon - mince and tatties (see tattie bag comment above) mince was padded out with soy mince, used bag of frozen reduced 19p neep/carrot and an onion from the 19p bags of red in fridge

Tues - reduced fish 79p from Mr M with milk/herbs from garden and left over veg from Sat, and mash from Mon

Wed - sneaky kebab from local place, not very mse but got some reduced fruit at same time and more butter from Mr T (86p) he paid for treat

Thurs - shepherds pie leftovers from earlier in week.

Fri - think we're out with kids

Sat - fajhitas

Sun - thinking a dumpling feast again after my first day at work, is simple and tasty.



Lunches are leftovers for him to micorwave, fruit and snacks often portion up each meal one extra so we've lots in freezer.

lunches for me are cupsoups/noodles (5/£1 from M/B), breakfast bickies (reduced) and fruit and have hot choc in tub I take into work.

Its not very exciting but its keeping us going. When it warms up maybe I can get rid of the carb rich foods. There's only a kettle at work and its sub-arctic so I need hot stuff.

rtandon27

A fly by "Hello" and glad to 'see' you & know you are busy & gardening!


Crunch time for me as office move is tomorrow (and it's fiscal year end!!!) :eek:


Chicky is lovely - amazing how much she's filled out since you got her!

Pippilongstocking

Hey RT my lovely I hope the office 'flit' goes well.

How are the bargains at your end, slim pickings this way. Well there are reductions but they're so ludicrous they just make me giggle. I'm sure I saw some bread reduced to 1.29 the other day.

Pfft.

Working 4 days is ace, but a bit of an adjustment. And, if I'm honest a juggle as there's no distractions at gardening work, but there's also no commuication with outside world which focusses the mind too, but leaves the admin chores etc for later.

So it all mounts up, I'm sure I'll find a balance soon. I'm happier working that's for sure.

And I've been asked to do some helping with a local lady gardener from work, here and there, her jobs, so I just turn up and help. No brain work. Perfect the now.

Garden is slow progress, getting bricks laid to edge new tiny lawn the now, moving all the shurbs perennials into side borders for this year from dotted areas round garden.

Must put in fruit bushes in cleared border in veg patch.

Raised beds are still not screwed together - hopefully soon.

Need a post for my gate too.

I only planted wild garlic as an edible this week.

I've started garlic and shallots, but aside that there's nowt happenning, its all merry-go-round-ish in the garden.

I'm SO BAD at starting 18 jobs at once.

I like the diversity but its slow progress even so.

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, being asked to help someone else sounds good :j but pah indeed to starting 18 things at once - rather how I feel at the minute...

We have ludicrous non-bargains here too - Completely bashed box of cornflakes reduced from £2.39 to £2.17, that type of nonsense. Co-op is by far the worst offender! Bizarrely there's occasionally some good fruit and veg reductions at the local spar, normally wouldn't do near there for that as it's so expensive but they often have 20 p bags of nanas (clearly cos nobody ever pays full price for them!)

Pippilongstocking

ha cheery sounds familiar eh.

Our co-op isn't bad to be fair for fruit/veg at a certain time of day I'm learning. And the local garage has strange reductions in a basket by the til, often 10p but random. Like really random things such as things I'd think, now would I cook/eat that, invariably its probably not. But bargains nevertheless

As is Mr M on occasion but these days the reductions are few and far between, including nana's - but I guess maybe its a reflection of harder times.

With that in mind, I might actually do something productive today involving moving now.

gone 12 and having done 3.5 hours work, I'm still in my pjs.

Pippilongstocking

List

phone mother, free minutes
walk mutts - local
garden, plant rest of wild garlic to bulk up for selling - too wet
finish brick edges too wet
put stoves on maybe do some cooking
chainsaw some pallets free wood we love need more pallets now.
[COLOR="rgb(255, 0, 255)"]feed hens again, enquire if they'd like to lay some eggs soon[/COLOR]
Skype ds about weekend catch up
raid fridge/freezer to see what grub we've got
[COLOR="rgb(255, 0, 255)"]make a food list, thinking maybe just fruit[/COLOR]/cheese dont' need cheese lots in freezer
plant some fruit bushes and stuff in pots planted one dicentra alba, not really a great effort but it was soggy.
Do some tidying up but don't go crazy as its really a day off.
look for a decent, reasonably priced washing machine
eat from house cupboards.
Scoff reduced cherries 25p



enjoy your days