Travelling On

rtandon27

Love a good plan KC - can't wait to hear the details!

Karmacat

Cheery_Daff said:

Poh, sounds like a good time with family, and a nice ambitious plan you've got there for the next few weeks! What a lot you'll get done, how wonderful! Are you planning specific tasks, or just going to see how you get on?

Yep, its been lovely - we slowed down a bit on Friday and Saturday, bro. isn't as fit as he was (uh, he stopped exercising!  nothing problematic  ) The plan has immediate short term stuff for the next 8 days or so, because of our Hampshire holiday.  The 8 day stuff is basically:
- catching up on finance stuff (French taxes are due, for instance, and I need to sort the regular payment into my current account, private dentistry announcement from my NHS dentist ...).
- cleaning and tidying - the house, me, the laundry, the garden   
- several emails, including a forgotten birthday, drat.
- garden: harvest rhubarb, even if I just freeze it, and plant my mint and sage.

Then when I get back, October is about clearing my bedroom and my living room, so that I can get double glazing in those two rooms installed - hopefully in time for winter.  There's a lot of little tasks in that.  Christmas presents and Christmas cards also figure. 

And then ... I have a list of about 100 items, room by room in this house, eg the bathroom is only 5, which are:
- repair lightpull
- repair skirting board
- repair pull string for window blind
- paint radiator wall
- put shelf up.

Apart from the 8 hours a week on these plans and gardening - keeping up to date with finances, and my genealogy research and writing.

So from mid October on, that's how it goes   I really need a big plan, it's how I can use my time most effectively, rather than frittering, which I don't enjoy once I've done it!

Suffolk_lass

Be careful, harvesting rhubarb in September - traditionally advice was not to harvest after July but this year has been a bit later due to the funny spring. Nevertheless, September is very late. My Mum says the (Oxalic) acid builds up in it as it gets older and say to look out for red stripes on the sticks (you can cook it with citric acid (lemon) to counteract this a bit but it might upset you). I can't immediately see anything online to support that suggestion but the other reason is so that the plant puts something into itself, late in the season, so it comes back stronger next year. The RHS suggest not to harvest after July on their link, here

Karmacat

My word, I'm glad I posted, and I'm glad you replied - that's some serious damage right there!  Lesson learned.  The RHS info is actually quite basic, but I googled "oxalic acid in late season rhubarb", and came across a handy little pdf from Massachussetts: oxalicacid.pdf (hampshire.edu)

Found this on a forum too Rhubarb stems - poisonous in August? | Gardeners Corner - The Friendly Gardening Forum though the link to rhubarbinfo. and a blogpost on poison has been deleted.

I think I'll harvest *some* - freeze it, and we'll see.  I'll do it in May next year!

Today ... laundry, cleaning working surfaces, emails, cards, amend Asda order for Tuesday.  I'm **not** going to work myself into the ground, but nor am I going to spend most of the day reading Outlander novels 

edwink

Suffolk_lass said:

Be careful, harvesting rhubarb in September - traditionally advice was not to harvest after July but this year has been a bit later due to the funny spring. Nevertheless, September is very late. My Mum says the (Oxalic) acid builds up in it as it gets older and say to look out for red stripes on the sticks (you can cook it with citric acid (lemon) to counteract this a bit but it might upset you). I can't immediately see anything online to support that suggestion but the other reason is so that the plant puts something into itself, late in the season, so it comes back stronger next year. The RHS suggest not to harvest after July on their link, here

Wow, I didn't know that, how very interesting.  I always knew that rhubarb leaves were poisonous to chickens but didn't know about the harvesting side of it for us humans. 

Edwink 

Karmacat

Karmacat said:

Today ... laundry, cleaning working surfaces, emails, cards, amend Asda order for Tuesday.  I'm **not** going to work myself into the ground, but nor am I going to spend most of the day reading Outlander novels 

Yep, that worked.  Some laundry done, some cleaning done, no emails but 3 cards sent, Asda order amended.  I'm pleased with that, wanted a balance between working and lounging about   There were 19 items on my list to be done before 28th September, and I've done 4.5 and decided not to do another at all.  That's a quarter of the items ticked  but its lots of little ones  most of what's left will take a lot longer.  That's okay, I can do that  

badmemory

It has been an interesting growing season this year.  A friend normally gives me loads of rhubarb from his garden which would otherwise go to waste, none at all this year.  Another normally has loads of small apples & crab apples, only 2 apples this year from all his trees.  They are near a fairly busy road so I asked if someone was picking them, I don't mind that just hate them going to waste, he said no they just hadn't grown this year.  So no rhubarb or apple batter pudding this year, which is probably a good thing for the waist line.  But it is really quite weird & is the first year for at least 12 that this has happened.

Karmacat

Karmacat said:
The plan has immediate short term stuff for the next 8 days or so, because of our Hampshire holiday.  The 8 day stuff is basically:

- catching up on finance stuff (French taxes are due, for instance, and I need to sort the regular payment into my current account, private dentistry announcement from my NHS dentist ...).
- cleaning and tidying - the house, me, the laundry, the garden   
- several emails, including a forgotten birthday, drat.
- garden: harvest rhubarb, even if I just freeze it, and plant my mint and sage.

Sticking to my short term plan (until the start of next week ):
- French taxes not due till 15th October, I don't need to squeeze them into these 8 days.
- 4 buckets of garden waste into the green bin, which is collected tomorrow.
- bit of cleaning done, much more needed.  No matter what there is to be cleaned, I hate cleaning it 
- starting to get food together for the hol, and also do some of the research. The research is *really* enjoyable, so there might be more of that 

Karmacat

Dear me, I was on the phone at 9am talking about energy suppliers - that gave me quite a shock, I'm not used to being lucid verbally at that time of the morning    Not going to take any action now, I don't think, but:
- I'll take my laptop to the Hampshire AirBNB next week, so we can take action as appropriate.  Free wifi there, which is good.  If I do nothing, currently my monthly DD will go up by £20 a month, which is more or less a 30% increase.
- today, couple more cards to send, I've submitted my current meter readings, finish cleaning the shopping, make sure I get all the rubbish in the landfill bin for tomorrow, then any of the optional tasks like weeding, freezing rhubarb, cleaning kitchen floor, etc.  My brain is getting bored with it all, but a lot more needs doing.  I found myself trying to sneak off yesterday to do novel-plotting, oops  

Cheery_Daff

I don't think a little bit of novel plotting will do any harm... 😈😁

Sounds like you're getting lots of things ticked off the list, which is great!