Put away your purse & become debt-averse

HairyHandofDartmoor

I hope you're having a lovely day in the garden Foxgloves and getting lots done 🙂 🌱.

foxgloves

Hi Paspatur - I'm glad that you enjoy my diary. It does help to keep me focused on sensible financial behaviour!
Re Easter cards - I feel no need to justify sending these to a very few people. Junk mail is still being routinely delivered here & the volume of that handled will be absolutely way in excess of a few cards. I have always thought the delivery of junk mail is both a waste of postal workers' time & trees, & yes, the reason is financial. The bosses of this now privatised company will not want their shareholders to lose the junk mail income stream. That's a political issue & will hopefully be examined with a change of government (in time) & re-nationalisation of the postal service, along with rail & water.
Back to Easter cards, I am so glad I sent one to a particular person - a very elderly, housebound distant relative. She lives alone, doesn't use the internet & the phone is difficult as she doesn't hear it ringing unless she is right on top of it & can reach it. A usually helpful neighbour is self-isolating because of cancer, so is unable to help atm. This morning, she had no milk, no bread & was down to her last 4 incontinence pads as her AgeUK link person arranged by social services had also gone into self-isolation, but seemingly with nothing put in place. This 89-year old lady has simply fallen through the net. She has no closer family than my sister & myself ( & we are only distantly related) and we don't live nearby. So today, my sister has been trying to sort out some groceries while I've tracked down her local Covid19 volunteer taskforce (who will be contactable tomorrow).
I knew that receiving a cheery Easter card with a little message inside would make her day (in any time, but especially now) and I am 100% comfortable with my decision to go ahead & send one. 
And if we are all still in lockdown this time next month (which I'm certain we will be), I will be posting her another nice card with a letter in it, unless there has been official advice to individuals to stop using postal services. If that becomes part of the rules, I will of abide by it, as we are, of course, doing with all the other measures.
F

HairyHandofDartmoor

How sad for your relative that she's slipped through the care net, poor lady. I'm sure she'll delighted to get the card as older people set great store by handwritten cards 🙂. There's a balance between protecting people's physical health and protecting their mental health.

 

moving_forward

Very glad your lady has you and your sister to look after her Foxgloves xx

foxgloves

Greetings Sunbeams,
Quite a useful day here on the whole - nice & sunny this morning, but with an increasingly chill wind blowing in this afternoon. I didn't intend to spend an hour & a half yakking to my sister via Skype, but it is good to have a catch-up & to see with my own eyes (if that makes sense) that they are all ok. She'd had a bit of a sore throat, so I was dreading that it might have morphed into something more suspicious, but she said it hadn't come to anything, so I was pleased to hear that. It also gave us an opportunity to discuss ways to get our aforementioned elderly relative the practical help she needs with basics during the Covid emergency. I did get a quick text from my sis this afternoon to say that thankfully, one little part of our plan was in place with a delivery of medical essentials. So that was quite a lot of my morning. What about my gardening plans?
Yep, not bad! I've potted a dozen lollo rosso lettuce seedlings into modules for growing on. When they are big enough, they'll be planted out in a veggie bed. I'll see if I can patch up my ancient W*lko's mini polytunnel so that I don't have to go out & buy another one. I think I can use the original hoops & improvise a polythene cover by cutting open some clear bin liners I brought back with me when we were clearing Mum's house last year. I also pr*cked out my echium seedlings - again a pack of seed found at Mum's - the variety is 'Blue bedder'. I've grown these before. They are quick & easy and the bees seem to love them. I've got 2 big trays full for me & 2 smaller trays for the 'Free Plants Cheer-Up' crate I intend to pop at the end of our drive in a week or two when they are bigger. So....where was I? Oh yes, well, I watered everything in the greenhouse & checked that all my veggie babies taken down there yesterday weren't looking too grumpy about it. A decidedly dodgy-looking cucumber plant, but I always lose a couple of those. Once they've got the hump, there's not a lot of talking to them, to be honest!
Lunch - leftover 'Pinch of Nom' baked beans I made the other day with home-baked sourdough toast (very nice, the beans obviously keep well in  the fridge as they were just as tasty) then back outside where I cleared the back of one of my big flower borders. There was a lot of goosegrass, general ivy rampancy & bit of dead privet, so I did fill a couple of trugs. Gave it a quick fork over & filled a gap with 5 free foxglove plants from the self-seeded ones I've been potting up. Waved the watering can around, Mr F brought me a cup of tea & I sort of fizzled out, as felt I'd rather be sitting by the pond reading, than working. But it was a useful day. Another nice thing was that while I was yakking to my sis on Skype, my best friend was on the phone to Mr F asking him to relay to her how to set up Skype herself. I gather she had some weird settings on her laptop but it is all now resolved & so from tomorrow, we can Skype each other & that will be lovely. 
The smallest things help, don't they, in these sad & uncertain times. Well m'dears, I hope you've all managed to see at least a little bit of sunshine today. We all just have to keep going, don't we? 
Stay safe - we are planning to watch a film tonight, so I think I will light some candles instead of the fire......heating has been reduced this past week & will be further reduced over the coming week. Time to start getting some credit building on the energy account.
F xx

crazy_cat_lady

I'm so pleased to read that you've been able to help the elderly lady out. It scares me to think of how many people are falling through the net at this time. 
You'd have been proud of me today foxgloves - litter picking in my garden.

foxgloves

Eh? There's been CCL garden activity? As we used to say at school... "Stands back in amazement, hair stands on end!!"
Seriously, that should make you feel better about being out there. Not everybody wants to be a gardener & that's fine, but everyone can get shot of mood-lowering litter.
So that's a result, m'duck! 
F x

Onebrokelady

Yay,so glad you managed to help your elderly relative and also had a good day in the garden,I got some bits done in mine too, my patio is looking a lot better now and I feel pleasantly tired this evening so will hopefully sleep well,it was good to get out in the sun too 😊

Honeysucklelou2

Echium is a lovely plant to have in the garden, beautiful shade of blue and good for attracting bees if I remember correctly. I haven’t grown any for a while, must look out for some seeds!

DawnW

Glad your elderly relative's plight became known to you, and you were able to get some help for her. It does worry me that there will be a lot of people falling through the, let's face it, pretty fragile these days, safety nets that they normally rely on, and the full extent of this won't become known until after this horrible pandemic has subsided