Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Blackcats

I agree Foxgloves - some people say that they understand all the current advice and restrictions and then they add a great big BUT .... and explain why it's different for them.  It's difficult and we are all learning as we go along but surely to goodness people must see that the scale of the response is in place in order to prevent something catastrophic.  

There are also lots of positives - my elderly parents found a pack of toilet paper from their neighbour outside their door with some drawings and notes from the children.  As we know toilet paper is a valuable commodity these days so that was a very generous gift 😄

foxgloves

Aww, that was kind of them, Blackcats, & drawings too. There are so many kind & generous people out there. And on a good day, I think they probably do outnumber all the selfish me, me, me t*ats.
F x

foxgloves

Hello Daffodils, 
Despite being treated to breakfast in bed by Mr F (for no reason other than I'd felt sad last night & he thought I deserved it), I've had a productive day, mostly spent out in the garden. I pegged out the overnight laundry, then fetched the edging tool & re-edged two of my big flower borders plus my winter corner. I cleared a tangle of undergrowth under about 4m of hedge (that can be an ongoing job) & chopped it all up for the compost bins. I weeded, lightly dug over the soil & moved a few self-sown lunaria plants to better positions. I did pull a few straggly ones out but their flowers are good for early bees, so Ive kept the best ones. I've also watered all my greenhouse seedlings.
Mr F has been so industrious. By the time I got up, he'd already serviced the mower, cut the lawn & mended the hosepipe. The latter was a 'shop from home' classic. I thought we'd need to buy a new hose, but unbeknownst to me, he'd brought a collection of 'hosepipe bits' back from when we cleared out Mum & Dad's garage. He cut out the small section which had the hole, then rejoined the two sections with an adaptor gizmo. So pleased we neither need to buy a new one or send all that plastic to landfill. We'll, he had some coffee, then he announced he was cleaning the conservatory glass, which he did inside & out as well as scrubbing out the gunkyfied guttering. Then he decided that as he had the bucket, cloths, etc out, he may as well clean all the windows too. What a hero! It looks so much brighter & cleaner.....although I reckon there will be at least one cat nose mark on the front window by tomorrow morning!
I've had my big jumper & coat on, but have spent an hour & a half sitting in the sunshine outside reading. There's a really chilly wind, but the sunshine was lovely & I enjoyed watching my tame blackbird, two bees, a buzzard circling over our street, as well as thinking about how many hundreds of tadpoles are going to hatch out of the huge amount of frogspawn in our pond. I think the fresh air & exercise has probably done me good. I felt lighter on my feet too, which might have been imaginary, but I think I may brave the scales again at some point over the next week. 
And I'm still working on some goals & priorities to help get through the coming months.
Take care all of you, 
F x

Onebrokelady

That sounds like a lovely day Foxgloves,I kept looking out the window at work and wishing I was at home in my garden 

foxgloves

Awww, I bet you did, OBL. I do hope the sunny weather holds until you are next able to do so. I'm sure it will do you good. 
I'm going to have too many plants. I sowed plenty as I have a greenhouse & my sister doesn't, so I always take her lots of plants at Easter. Now that we can't meet up (& she's 130 miles away so it's not possible just to drop them off on the doorstep) I will have a surplus. so am considering potting some up, labelling & leaving them at the edge of our drive with a notice asking anyone passing to help themselves. I guess only dog walkers will be passing by but I think that might be better than wasting them. I'll see when I get to potting-on time.
F x

PurpleFairy26

If you go on ripenear.me you can post what you’ve got and then people slightly further afield than dog walkers might see it. 

PurpleFairy26

I resisted planting too many seeds yesterday so I can spread them out a bit rather than get them all ripening at the same time. Was so lovely to be outside though. 

foxgloves

Yes, Purple Fairy.... Defo gets my head in a better place if I can get some productive time out in the garden. 
F x

foxgloves

Evening sunbeams,
Another day which seems to have disappeared up its own whatnot! It seems like only a couple of hours ago that I was finishing my 2nd cup of breakfast coffee & deciding what to prioritise. Now Mr F has started prepping food for tonight's dinner & I would have liked some more hours for all that I'd planned. Never mind, there isn't exactly a shortage of time spent at home in the foreseeable future.
Did I actually achieve anything? Well, not bad, I suppose. I did two loads of laundry as it's such good pegging out weather & I don't like paying to use the heated airer if the line-drying pixies can do the job for free, so with all of that blowing in the sunshine, I did cat's blanket too, as it looked frankly as though it would soon be walking to the washer on its own! 
I pulled just under a kilo of spring rhubarb this morning. I'd noticed that the lid of my forcing crock was being pushed up from the inside which is either a bloody big spider (I have arachnophobia) or a sure sign that the rhubarb is ready. So I lifted the crock & enjoyed that moment of glorious lime-green leaves against those spring-pink stems. Stayed out in the sunshine to lop off the leaves there & then, before fetching my bundle back to the kitchen & turning it into compote. Enough to have with Greek yoghurt for lunch, to freeze 3 pots & to leave some in the fridge for tomorrow & Wednesday. Then time rather got away from me. I did quite a lot of tidying & had intended to get my Monday budget/banking session done, but I had a couple of long phone calls, in which I'm glad I had the opportunity to tell someone (key worker) with a very vulnerable person in their household that they had made the right decision to self-isolate......then a landscaper turned up (wearing gloves & observing a good distance, I'm pleased to say) to measure up outside in order to be able to give us a quote. I tied a kitchen towel around my nose & mouth, so must have looked very professional.......not! But these things have to be done & afterwards, I disinfected the door handles. Then my fish box arrived........more hand washing  - I must have washed my hands 20 times this afternoon - before divvying it all up into portions, labelling & freezing. Then Mr F arrived home (his work has closed down but he had an email asking him to pop in on a buildings/equipment matter) & after I'd relayed the logistics of the landscaping quote & that it may very well need to be work which happens a few months in the future.........I really don't mind that at all, I just need to know if we can afford it & if we can, how much money to commit to keep my home improvements budget realistic........well, the day had pretty much disappeared. I ran around fetching in laundry (dry!), watered my greenhouse seedlings, tidied up the grape vine while I was in there & decided I was done for the day.
Mr F was keen to cook tonight, so I am going to read. I have a huge pile of library books to see me through the next few weeks. 
I am really focusing hard on trying to concentrate on those areas of my life which are within my gift to control, so if you get tired of reading about things like seedlings, rhubarb, & frogspawn on practically a daily basis, you're not going to find me very entertaining going forward, I'm afraid!
Take care all,
F x

HairyHandofDartmoor

A bit of respite from virus talk is a very good thing Foxgloves .