Get a grip woman!

EssexHebridean

Those cold frames look good SL, I just had a quick google. Might have to remember to keep an eye for them getting them in as one of those would fit a space we've mentally allocated for such a thing rather well! 

Suffolk_lass

EssexHebridean said:

Those cold frames look good SL, I just had a quick google. Might have to remember to keep an eye for them getting them in as one of those would fit a space we've mentally allocated for such a thing rather well! 

I'm not sure how long lived they will be but three years in, they are still going strong with one or two interventions after gales.

I've been a bit quiet - it got a bit frantic in the run up to my exam on Saturday, and then it was like a deflating paddling pool after the plug has been pulled. Anyway, all done, nothing to be done about whatever I put, and tentatively hopeful that I have passed. Results towards the end of January, I think. 

Our gates are now up for the three remaining exits from our garden and just some remaining re-furb'ing on the wrought iron ones, and a latch for the oak front gate to finish that little project. We have still to install the little loopy fence (border edging) under the hedges though before the dog can be allowed to run free.

Lots of other things underway, including preparations for a lunch next Friday (1st) and various other pruning, slashing and burning, and so on in the garden.

By the way, at the risk of mentioning the C word too early, Morries got their Nordman C-trees this weekend and they are £20 for a 5-6 foot tree. I have mine and it is in a bucket of water outside until the week before Christmas. I always buy it after the third weekend in November so I can minimise the time it sits, drying out, before it is brought in and decorated. I can't find a more bargainous option and even at £2 more than last year, I anticipate it beating the local competition by at least 50% of local prices. I AM going to look for a blue spruce, container grown though, as  possible lower environmental impact alternative.

LadyWithAPlan

Well done on your study and exam focus .. plus a busy fun life ! 

Your firefighters sounds fabulous / do you have an Etsy link or something as be a great gift for me to buy for my DS as she has a wood fire stove 
I’d love to buy a couple 

I forgot you are on the debt free board so had to search for you  
never used the bookmarks so I will now start 

Suffolk_lass

Gosh I have been quiet - just totally lacking in time (or enthusiasm, for anything). I need to get a grip (as I once said!)

Starting to look forward now that the sale of bee exam, honey and wax products sale,  and the Village lunch is behind me.

We are in discussion about the possibility of having a new loft hatch and boarding in one of our lofts (the cottage was originally two cottages, so there are two under the thatch, and a third shallow one on the kitchen and utility extension). One is stuffed with "stuff" which might be mostly cardboard but was stashed by DS and DH, as I have only recently started to look there (I stand on a chair on the washstand and can then get my upper body through the hatch) - it's a nightmare of disorganisation. There is, as you can tell from the preceding, no ladder; and I have never been up there. It is not boarded so I have no intension of doing so either. Park that for now. The other end of the house has a small hatch (again, no ladder) that is too small for my 6'3" DH or 6'4"+ DS to get through, and it is above the Victorian Gentleman's wardrobe, so completely inaccessible, even to the bendiest, tiniest person (which I am not, tiny, that is, I'm still too bendy). I am going to get a price for a new hatch in our bedroom, with a ladder and boarding the loft. We have so many plastic storage boxes of "stuff" - eg four of new, unused, honey jars, and 6 of Christmas lights and decorations. I would just like to have back my study, and both spare bedrooms. I don't want to put stuff outside and in any case, there is more in the cartlodge I would like to be indoors. I believe there may be a few things up there, I remember getting some huge aluminium pans down before the wardrobe was assembled, when we moved here! (but I don't recall us ever putting anything up there. A bee storage area, plus some archive material for the Village, and some hobby paraphernalia are my ambitions - DH has lots of Motorcycle club magazines, in boxes, in the dining room and sitting room, and nowhere for these.

Thing two is making up beekeeping kit and cleaning that which needs it, ahead of the Spring. We have some new equipment, purchased in the sales, and we could get sorting that over Christmas.

I say over Christmas; we are four for Christmas Day, and nothing else planned. New Year will be missing at least two of the five normal guests as they have a family crisis that must take priority (and because they will be MIA, I think the other couple will be too as he has been very ill with sepsis and we are over 50 miles from them) - so we might have one guest, or he may bale out too. So we might get going on some decluttering of corners of death. I opened a piece of built in furniture this week and found the boxes of photo albums were covered in dead beetles, spiders webs and one flocked album (wedding photos of my Sis's event) looked as though it had been nibbled. Yet more lidded plastic boxes have been ordered and delivered and must now be deployed. I am not sure if they will still fit in that cupboard, but hopefully they will.

What else? Flourgate. I ordered a 25k sack of my bread flour. It is Italian and always takes about a week to come. With the additional customs paperwork it is over £40 now. Unfortunately they gave it to Yodel and it sat in their "final delivery depot" awaiting a driver for over two weeks. So I was running out of flour. So I ordered a 15k sack from somewhere else (same flour, via our free Prime trial), which was delivered by Evri at 22.30 the following night... followed some time later that night by the 25k sack. Bearing in mind how full my house already is, you can imagine how impressed I am. My choice was bought bread vs order a second, a day before we were eligible for the refund for non-delivery. Cue more plastic storage - 2 10L boxes and 8 giant sweet jars and I can compress 3k into, I topped up three glass storage jars with the rest and it is done. Remind me 40 kilos is too much next time - it will be nearly a year's time!!

My seeds from RHS arrived - 15 packs of harvested seed for £10. Mostly things to have in our wildflower "orchard" - I use speech marks because it is a small area with two island shrubs that are ornamental plus one cherry, three apples and a crab apple, oh, plus four damsons and a Mirabelle plum in the hedge with a newish Tay-berry. The lesson is not to choose the smallest rootstock for apples. Nice apples but tiny and impoverished. They will be planted in Feb, some sprinkled, some planted in seed trays to plug out.

I am not expecting my (beekeeping) exam results until the last week of January, but some are saying 6th. I am signing up to do the next one with a January to March study group and exam on 24th. Next week we plan to treat the bees for phoretic mites when the brood nest is at a minimum. We are treating our at four locations, and three other beeks' bees at four other locations! I say "we" - that is the royal we, as DH has the mask so it is "he" really. I need to stop volunteering him for things.

His reward is that he will be going on a bar crawl on Saturday, in London, with some former colleagues. I shall be designated transport provider, to and from the station, and dog minder for the day! We have declined an evening social event with friends because he will not be up to it (and it is 50 miles away!). 

That is quite enough from me except to add I have bread proving (of course I do, with 40k to use!) and DS & new GF coming for lunch. Oh and my shopping list is written for 20th December click and collect, with the turkey for collection on 22nd and it will all come within our Grocery Challenge £3k for the year.

Humdinger1

Wonderful to read your ever-elegant prose again @Suffolk_lass! Yes, the lofts of doom; they are always the last to be rationalised.  Loving your plans Humdinger xx

Suffolk_lass

Thanks @Humdinger1; you are always so positive!

Bees
Today is exactly three weeks since the cold snap started, and would have, hopefully, stopped our Queen Bees from laying, so we plan to treat all our hives with a treatment for the endemic Varroa destructor phoretic mites. The three week gap is so that there is  minimal amount of brood under wax cappings as the vapour we use does not penetrate this, so only kills the mites on the adult bees. 

In preparation DH made up the remaining Kingspan/Celotex insulation to fit in the roofs, and I made up takeaway boxes of fondant, so the bees have a "just-in-case" food source and we can see without opening them in cold weather, whether they need replenishment. He will do all of our colonies today (four locations, 13 colonies) and we will help others by doing theirs, hopefully tomorrow.

Garden
Our friend has given up farm work and is now working as a gardener, including some for us. It has really given us a push with our garden. Ivy removed, dead tree stumps in the hedge out, and lots of dead seed heads and stalks cut down. Three new-to-us marketplace gates in place, and discussions started regarding narrower veg beds and finally building the fruit cage (January), and new edging for the front beds. Anyway, it beats my usual "hibernation" mode as I have been out with him.

He isn't a gardener with very much plant knowledge so I have also been out to two commercial locations to walk them with him and advise on pruning, clearing and what to cut down now so it comes again next year, and what is actually dead and needs clearing. He's good on many but not all trees, as I did some work with him about three years ago when he was made redundant, and gardening was his stop-gap. Now he has given up the farm work after a diagnosis of remitting and recurring MS, and some associated sight issues. He works hard, asks when he doesn't know, and is a thoroughly nice chap. We are very pleased to have him. 

Money/Shopping
Nothing to report money wise really, as I have not really shopped beyond milk and eggs (delivered) and a couple of packs of streaky bacon to wrap round a frozen joint, make carbonara with, and freeze the second pack. Freezers remain stubbornly full, despite several weeks of trying to empty them! I'm going to move some around this morning as I have a big plastic box of bread pudding in the kitchen freezer (made to use up some donated bread rolls) and I would like to swap this for curry ready cooked rice, chick peas and lentils. I might put the second opened bag of ice cubes in the same freezer, and move the remaining carrier bags of donated rolls to the toolshed. It usually has ready meals but I think there are any left (hooray! - we are not great at using them up). 

That's enough from me for the minute, I want to try and catch up on a few diaries on here (card -writing avoidance!)

Suffolk_lass

Hooray, we have been invited somewhere for Boxing Day! My cousin's house. They have been having a new kitchen fitted and the fitter went awol before tiling and flooring. It has been months.

debtfreeoneday

Ah lovely you can go out for the day 

Suffolk_lass

Well the freezer swap was undertaken and a second bread pudding has been made. There are still 4 rolls in my freezer. I was hopeful that DS might like them but no. DS came over yesterday for a hug. We all need one. DH had something happen on Friday morning and we spent the day in A&E. My lovely friend just came and took the dog so I was free to take him. We had a call from one of the doctors in the neurological team (yes, Sunday) to hear their thoughts. As we had speculated, they will have him in to have a scan. When they move, the NHS really move. She said this will likely be within the next three days, and he must continue with the aspirin that was prescribed while we were at the hospital. DH is home, physically normal, but with this thing having happened, it needs further consideration. I don't want to say more at the moment.

Bees & cat
So DH had treated all the out apiary bees on Thursday but thanks to forgetting his hive tools he was not able to remove the feeders from two hives at one location, so I offered Saturday. Wearing a jacket, wellies plus gloves and gauntlets, I went in and they were not happy. It was 11c so as good as it was going to get. I immediately took two stings to my legs, through my jeans. They did not appreciate me cracking open their gluing activities to attach the feeder to the brood chamber. I managed to do the manipulation, adding a clear crown or quilt board, a box of fondant and some insulation to sit around and above the box of fondant, but we had to go back Sunday to secure the ratchet straps (that repeatedly grabbed my gloves) and put an eke on one (that is a frame with nothing in) to sit around the insulation I added around the feeding block of fondant. This because that hive has a shallow roof and I want to make sure there are no draughts. Beyond this, we can just remove the roof and the insulation on top of the box of fondant and check if they are in the box, and eating it, without them being exposed to any cold, or any loud cracking noises.I was followed to the car (they may have been on my jacket) and let a bee out of the car window. When I got home I asked DH to check e over for bees but he missed one, and I took a further sting to my throat as I removed my jacket. I took antihistamine to stop the itching, two more to go to bed (early, at 21.30) and another Sunday morning. Mind you, I take one every day because I am allergic to Stealth Cat, who comes and snuzzles me when I sit at the dining room table or in my study. She's a purry old thing and being told I was allergic, we compromised that I take the antihistamine and still have our dear old cat.

On the upside, having rearranged the food in freezers, to bring bags of homegrown veg into the small shed F/F, I have half a chest freezer of space in the cartlodge. I plan to empty this one over time so I can properly defrost it, and then use it to move the garden produce freezer contents to it while I defrost that one too. So while I have been silent on the Reverse Meal Planning thread, I have been reading and acting on the wisdom there. My ambition is for my mantra to be "Don't pay the SM to store their food for them" I might add it to my signature too. I need to follow LaPlan and chant it I think.

I was at high risk (of shopping) yesterday as I went to the pharmacy to collect my prescriptions and buy aspirin, but I resisted. Instead I removed a bagged up chicken breast, cooked it separately and then poured the remains of the chinese takeaway in to the pan and we had that for a second day running. Best of all, I am back up to enough clean takeaway boxes to store things like cooked chick peas, lentils and brown rice in the freezer. I'm planning a veg curry this week as I got a box of puy lentils out ready to include. While they are cheaper this way, cooking from dry, I am not sure that is the case if they then live in a freezer for some months until I use them. Hmm!

Enough for now, I am starting yeast to add to a sluggish sourdough started to make bread and the timer has gone to check it. 

Watty1

The NHS can be impressive on full move.  Hope you get answers or at least clarity soon.