Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Onebrokelady

moving_forward said:

Our waste water (grey water) pipes go into a proper drain. Before you get getting all jealous the proper drain is set in a cupboard in....yes you guessed it our conservatory!  Your diy numpty must have a cousin thats a conservatory builder that builds around drains rather than moving them!!  His other cousin was the boyfriend of the lady we brought the house off that has been responsible for some horrid and downright dangerous electrical work that we have had to pay out to put right.

They must be related to my next door neighbour because I they put their conservatory over the drain cover 😂

Onebrokelady

foxgloves said:

Hello Soggy Diary Readers, 
Woke up to big rain again this morning, of course we did. Are other types of weather available? It is starting to feel as though it will rain for ever.
Then an email plopped into my inbox from our energy provider. It informed me that our account is £313 below where it should be (which I knew) but that our monthly dd payment is 'about right' (because I got them to increase it) so the best way to get our account straight would be if I wanted to make a card payment of £313 (I didn't). However, I had foreseen this debt on our account for a good few months. Our dd was reduced to an amount I was pleased to see, but which I knew was too low to be sustainable. So I have paid the lump sum & got us back to a nil balance. Just because I felt peed off by this, I turned down all the upstairs heaters a notch. Grrrr.
Anyway, on a brighter note, there was a couple of hours this pm when it actually stopped raining. I went down to the greenhouse, swept my potting bench, watered a few bits then sowed some flower seeds: verbena bonaiensis, nocotiana, petunias, verbascum, alyssum, trailing verbena, French lavender & calendula. The calendula were saved seeds I collected myself & the others were packs of seeds I brought back from Mum's house last year. The greenhouse glass is very green from all the rain. Just waiting for a dry day (more chance of seeing a unicorn atm) & I will get out there & sparkle it up with some soapy water & elbow grease. 
Take care all, 
F x

Don't want to make you jealous but it's currently sunny here, it's very windy mind you and there are three unicorns eating the grass on my front lawn 😂😂😂

Onebrokelady

foxgloves said:

OMG! IT'S NOT RAINING!!!
Must get my act together & get down the garden without further ado!
Chat later, 
F x

Hurry you e must have at least 10 minutes before it starts again 😂

foxgloves

Blackcats - I've sometimes stood in the queue in garden centres in high summer behind someone with a basket of things like annual gerberas which are going to flower for just a month or two at the very best. I want to say 'Get more from your money by buying something which will look fab right through September & beyond'. I haven't though, as if someone looked in my basket & offered their opinion on what I should be buying, I can't guarantee I wouldn't give them an earful! Also all the folk buying summer bedding the minute it appears in garden centres at Easter, despite the fact that it can often perish if it is planted out before late May.
F

Toni'sfriend

Hello Foxgloves

Hope you don't mind me asking but you are such an expert. I don't have a garden. Just somewhere where I can put pots and containers. Can you recommend something that is easy to grow from seed.

Thanks

foxgloves

Moving_forward- I wouldn't say I'm an expert on worm composters, but I do have one. I didn't attempt to build one. I bought the full kit & caboodle as I acquired it during the Spendy Years. I bought the 'Can o' Worms' one. It is very good. I did buy the whole kit, with a voucher to send off for the composting worms, a coir brick for making into their bedding & a woollen moisture mat to go on top. Now I know what I'm doing, I shop from home for these items. I generally top the worms up every year with a nice wiggly pot full from one of our ordinary dalek compost bins. I think that gets the numbers up after winter so they can get nicely productive (both with each other & with compost-making!). I use shredded paper for bedding, mixed with a bit of moist stuff from the kitchen compost caddy....I like to think that something so good for the soil can be created from soulless things like bank statements......& when a big cardboard box comes my way, I cut out big circles of card to use as moisture mats. The liquid plant feed is drained off via a tap in the base & I collect that in an old water filter jug which would otherwise have gone to landfill but is a perfect size for the job. Worm compost is very rich & gets used mostly for top dressing hungry plants in pots - my grapevine is always glad of a few dollops. So I can't give you any advice on making one because I bought mine, but to be fair, I bought it the year I got together with Mr F, so it has been in service continually from 1999 and is still in perfect working order. There is very little to go wrong. Human error or neglect is the cause of most wormery-based armageddon scenarios.
Hope this helps a bit,
F x

foxgloves

Greetings SUNNY people.....did you see what I said? SUNNY!! Yes, after rain first thing, the sun actually put in an appearance & we've had blue sky too. Not that I've had any time to venture outdoors or do anything garden-based. I spent this morning number-crunching because today is my Big Budget Day. I didn't find any nasty surprises while reconciling February's figures & was able to set what I think is a decent budget for March. 
One thing which I did notice was how twitchy I started feeling when I saw that one of our two 'Just for Points' credit card bills was £571. That's a bigger bill than usual. We always pay credit cards off in full each month, but that's a chunky amount to accomodate from one month's income. Now my head was telling me that unless Mr F had been 'sleep shopping' online, there was nothing on this bill which hadn't been budgeted for. And I was right. I had already paid off almost £300 of it from Savings Pot transfers & all on planned purchases, such as new tyres, etc. There was another Savings Pot transfer to do from the Tech Raplacement Pot for the new CD drive Mr F bought recently and he had £60 to pay in from his Spends for a couple of items bought online, so the actual bill, such as it was, wasn't big at all. I think because I've been a spender in the past & spent so many years kind of frittering my way through life with no budget whatsoever, I got very used to the regular perils of constantly outspending my income. Almost any bill arriving back in the day would fill me with horror because I either couldn't pay it without recourse to more borrowing or I could just about pay it but it left me very near the edge, should anything else crop up (such as a bonus time offer on my skincare of choice at the time or an amazing pair of boots). So when I saw that credit card figure this morning, while my HEAD knew it was fine because we budget for everything now, my HEART jumped like it used to back in the day, with the old 'Noooooooo!! It CAN'T be that much! What am I going to do?!'
I often forget that although I am better at money management than I ever thought I could be, I have been an irresponsible fritterer for a LOT longer than I've been a reformed character. And things like this larger than usual credit card bill sometimes bring me up short, thinking how different it all is now, to when I was constantly flying my the seat of my tights!
Well, must go & get the oven on for jacket potatoes & get a sourdough mixed up.
Hope you all had at least a glimpse of sunshine today.
F xx

foxgloves

TonisFriend - Almost any annuals will be fine in pots & containers. There are too many to list - your best bet is to go to a garden centre, look for things you like & see if the instructions mention they are good for containers. Trailing verbenas are pretty, zinnias (I had those last year), petunias & lobelias are classics, calendula (pot marigolds) will be fine, violas, rudbeckia, most annuals really. There is an amazing choice, it will really come down to what you fancy!
F x

moving_forward

Thanks for the wormery advice.  I'm not so saft as to try to make one this time around.  I did try starting it off with worms from our heap but think I probably tried to few to cope with what I was shoving in.  I shall have to research the cost of getting one (maybe bay of e can help).  Shredded paper and card is no probs.  
I want to use the liquid gold as plant food for my houseplants along with any needing a helping hand in the garden.  Currently I use an organic liquid food outdoors based on seaweed but its pricey.  We aren't fully organic but I try to be kind to mother nature where we can. I think the hotbin may have a tap too so more research needed before parting with any cash.  Thanks again x

Blackcats

Joining in the tales of bodge it and scarper DIY stories - on the first Saturday morning in a previous house, I put the washing machine on and after about 5 minutes my daughter asked why cornflakes were spinning round with the clothes in the machine.  Turns out some pipes had been incorrectly plumbed in so the contents of the sink where I'd been washing up went directly into the washing machine.  I think because the pipes didn't fit together properly the previous owner, the DIYer had also super glued the joints together. 😱