Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2015

GreyQueen

ModestyB, one of my acquantances dug up an old pram and a load of paintpots well-buried in the back garden of the house she bought.

I could have made a humourous exhibition entitled Weird S**t Dug up on the Allotment 2008 to Present, curated by GQ.

Prize-winner thus far is a plastic imitation of the three-legged molded glass sugar basins which were themselves made to imitate cut glass. With one of its stubby little feet missing. I'd love to know the back story to that being up there..........:rotfl:

One time I was thwacking around at the dereliction with the mattock, which is a double-headed kind which looks a bit like a pickaxe to the unititiated. A passing wit asked me if I'd struck buried treasure and I quipped back no, but I had just struck 1950s linoleum!

Someone I know near Auckland, New Zealand, found a whole car buried at the foot of their 30 degree sloping garden, which takes the biscuit as far as I'm concerned.

nursemaggie

Wow GQ I think no one will beat that unless somone finds a double decker bus.

vhalla1478

Hi again, Folks,

I spent three hours tidying up the garden and found a pair of secateurs in the shed and some posh gardening gloves - I don't know where they came from, but I'm grateful! I also started oiling the garden furniture, but have run out of teak oil until I get to the shops next week; but at least it is giving me a little room in the shed.

I didn't dig up anything exotic, just loads of chalk lumps and broken Victorian pots - academically interesting to me, but not enough to make a tea service or even a teapot come to that. When I lived in my sixteenth century cottage I found a few whole clay pipes, but that was all. However I can report that nothing seems to have died over the winter and I even have a few blooms on some 'osteospermum' - it sounds like a form of painful rheumatism, doesn't it? I also tidied up all my pots, planted out some primroses I'd had in the house and even have some winter flowering pansies still flowering. Garden centre here I come on Tuesday! Whether I will be able to move tomorrow is another matter, I'll let you know in the morning. I'm pleased I got so much done though ( I also put out pleas for secondhand garden tools) as it has given me an indication as to what I want and need to do next.

Just off for a cup of coffee with DS and DDL (dear daughter-in-law) will post recipe later.

I thought Angelina Jolie to play you, Cheerfulness, and Helen Mirren for Silvasava. Grey Queen, Prinzessilein and all you other lovely folk, I've yet to cast - all suggestions welcome.

Speak later.

Viv xx

silvasava

I thought the double decker bus ended up on the moon????
Our house was built in the 30's on what had been common land. The first owners had been bought it for their retirement by the local 'gentry' when they died it was sold to a family with young children & then we bought it in the early 70's. The garden had NEVER been dug! DH found bicycle frames, a motorbike frame and sheets of corrugated tin, glass bottles etc but the best find was a cannon ball! Would love to know the story behind that.

Vhalla - thank you for the compliment of Helen Mirren (love her) but I think my personality is more Maggie Smith Osteospermum roots easily if you want to increase your stock - just break a bit off & stick it firmly in the ground & you'll find it roots fairly easily (unless its a yellow one - never seem to have any luck with those)

cheerfulness4

vhalla1478 wrote: »

I thought Angelina Jolie to play you, Cheerfulness,
Viv xx

Perfect, we are so alike. :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Posting my spends early. I've been faffing over them for ages.


THUR 19 MAR
DAY 19

Money Spent Today - £9.71 Vouchers Spent - £5.00
Money Spent in Total - £56.90 Vouchers Spent in Total - £6.80
Money left in purse - £0.10 Float left- £0/£15
Jan non-foods left- £6.12/£15

Before I even comment on todays spends I have to minus 99p off for some veg oil that I completely forgot I had bought from B & M yesterday afternoon. Tut tut, that brain of mine!

Today I spent £7.02 in Aldi on 1 kg chicken breasts @ £3.95, 1x condensed milk @ 89p (on offer), 1kg of bananas @ 68p (there was actually 10 bananas weighing 1.375g), 1 x cream crackers @ 27p, 1x pk of 8 soft tortilla wraps @ 75p and 2x Baked beans @ 24p each.

Also a Morries I bought 1 x pk liver @ 98p and a large piece of YS Somerset Brie @ 89p.

I decided to debit the grocery account by £9.71 and take the remaining balance from the Float budget of 17p to pay for these shops.

FRI 20 MAR
DAY 20

Money Spent Today - £2.28 Vouchers Spent - £5.00
Money Spent in Total - £59.18 Vouchers Spent in Total - £6.80
Money left in purse - £0.82 Float left- £0/£15
Jan non-foods left- £4.17/£15

Quick run to morries to get 1x 'Readybrek' @ £1.79 and an Iceburg lettuce @ 49p from the grocery budget.

From the non-foods budget we bought 1 x 6pk dbl length loo rolls @ £1.95.

We had some free food today in the shape of 2 x sml uncut loaves (quickly stored in the freezer before the male folk devour it) and a YS pack of 5 slices of corned beef. (DH's loves this so I'll use it in his evening pack ups for work). We also had the usual 2 x 2ltrs of pop for DS that mum always buy for him when we take them shopping each week.

I've just finished watching that Back in Time for Dinner programme. I thoroughly enjoyed it. They hit the decade I was born next week but lots of things were familiar from to me about the 50's. Mum must have been a tad old fashioned.

cheerfulness4

Viv, after 3 hours gardening I reckon you should jump in a nice warm bath to relax those muscles. You'll be aching tomorrow!

GreyQueen

The thing about the NZ house was it was up a steep slope out in the bush, accessed by about 90 steps and built out from the hillside partially on stilts. The steep slope was forested and the car was found at the bottom of the slope near the road. They couldn't get it out so had to re-bury it. It was a bonkers place to garden, you had to use a rope to steady you on the slopes as you cultivated and they fished hundreds of bottles off the slope; they reckoned a previous owner had sat boozing on the deck and chucked them downslope when emptied.

In times past, there was nowhere to take a lot of this stuff so it was chucked into holes in the ground. Unfortunately, there's a gulf between old cr*p and archaelogical value and everything I find is of the rusty 4 inch nail/ sherds of window glass/ pottery fragments and misc.

I have apparently regained the early neolithic soil level, due to the amount of flint tools of that era, all jumbled with bits of brick, breeze blocks and related rubbish. One lottie neighbour, a russian lady, was so astonished by what she was digging out of her plot, that she asked what the site had been before it was allotments - the city dump?!

Shamefully, I had to tell her it'd been farmland for a couple of thousand years at least...........:rotfl:

kittym

Evening all

Your gardening finds have had me :rotfl::rotfl:
Great tip on painting plant pots. I would never have thought of that. I've got lots of half tins of spare paint sitting doing nothing, maybe a job for the wkend if the weather stays nice.

Managed to see the eclipse today, which was surprising as it was really cloudy, but there was a break in the clouds just at the right time.:j

Home made bread on the go, bungalow smells lovely. Slowly getting there with crochet wreath. Instead of paying lots for the poly ring for it to sit on I found some poly pipe insulation in the £ shop the I can shape into a ring and saved myself £5. :T

Have a nice evening everyone. xx

MandM90

cheerfulness4 wrote: »

We dug up a fridge, a bike and a single bed frame in one of our gardens. We just thought we were removing a rather ugly huge rockery but the neighbours told us that when the previous owners put the house on the market they mounded up the soil left from a pond they'd dug over all their rubbish.

:eek:

We dug up a 90s computer monitor, a printer, a shopping trolley (yes, actually completely buried), an 8ft rusty pole, cabinets and about a million tennis balls.

Today OH and I went to the allotment as allotment holders, for the first time! We constructed a composted out of used pallets:



(We also dug out a tiny 10X9 portion of roughly 2500 square ft...lots to go!)

We went to a farmer friend of ours who had an entire barn full of spare barley straw and took a car full so we can mulch around our plants. We're giving "no dig" gardening a try, one we've turned over turf for our new beds.

Also managed to find some abandoned canes and bits of wood from a pile by the allotments, which we used to construct our crude composter :cool:

Oh, and the wood we're using for the raised beds are covered by an old shower curtain!

vhalla1478

Hello again all, I've been having a good chuckle over your gardening finds - we could start a scrapyard if we amalgamated all of them.

Silasava, thank you for the tip about the osteo etc; they are deep purple so shall have a go in another part of the garden. I love Maggie Smith too but would never suggest her for any one of you as I think she outranks us all in seniority.

Cheerfulness, pleased you agreed with the casting;) and you're probably right; I should have a hot bath, especially as it was such a lovely day I then went for a walk round the farm!!

DB coming tomorrow evening so I'm very happy about that. He's had a derisory offer for what he is owed but it's a start and maybe at the end something is better than nothing and peace of mind is best of all.

Recipe after bath, I think. All six of the grandchildren were in a very boisterous mood tonight, so I had to join in as well. Good job I'm fit.

Viv xx