Put away your purse & become debt-averse

PrawnChorus

‘Taste of Mexico’ did make me laugh there 😂😂 I love reading your diary 

Four_Seasons

Hi Foxgloves I am just working my way through your diary, can you please explain "bullet journal" and do you still use one. many thanks.

Onebrokelady

You have managed to do lots more then me,I'm just sitting around melting and being generally grumpy because I'm too hot and tired due to lack of sleep,we tried to buy a fan for downstairs yesterday but they were sold out 😟

Baileys_Babe

Four_Seasons said:

Hi Foxgloves I am just working my way through your diary, can you please explain "bullet journal" and do you still use one. many thanks.

This should help @Four_Seasons
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/a25940356/what-is-a-bullet-journal/

foxgloves

Thanks, Bailey'sBabe for posting a link.

Four_Seasons - Hi & welcome. All contributions welcome on here. I think there's so much online about bullet diaries (they were a big trend 2 or 3 years ago) that it is probably easiest for you to have a look at some. I think the concept has been developed by individiuals so as to end up with a diary which contains as much life organisation as possible. I used mine for a year but at the end of that year, I knew I had no intention of spending ages ruling up, dating & numbering pages again. So my current diary is a conventional one - A5 - but I do use it for notes, grocery budget tracking, meal planning, as well as all the usual stuff like appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. It hasn't been a rigorously adhered to this year, of course, because of Lockdown. I always used to write my daily task list into my bullet journal but I've stopped doing that simply because I found I was doing really well on doing essential everyday stuff & keeping everything organised, but that this adherence to lists often seemed to get in the way of some of the more creative stuff I want to do or just waking up on the day & feeling it'd be a good day to do something different. I still include lists of particular things I might need to do by a deadline though - i.e Jobs before we go camping, things I need to do before Christmas, etc, etc,

OBL - I do sympathise as we both wilt in the heat too, particularly in this humid, muggy heat. We actually have a fan! It lives in the loft. It last had an outing one very hot summer when bizarrely I came back from a June camping trip with flu! Whenever we have a heatwave, I always suggest Mr F fetches the fan down from the loft. He absolutely hates boiling hot weather (even more than me!), so I always think he'd be so much more comfortable sitting near the fan. It is a floor standing one so can make a big difference to a room. He always says the same thing "I could do.....I'll see how I go" & the fan stays up in the loft while he moans his ears off about melting in the heat! You can't help some people! 
F x

foxgloves

Afternoon Sunbeams,
Cooler this morning but now starting to heat up again. Sadly not a single raindrop has landed on our garden. I am feeling envious of these downpours & fabulous lightning I keep hearing about. 
Busy day yesterday. I think my posts do get a bit long, so I will try to do a potted version: Couldn't get to sleep because of loads of meowing. Since the sad demise of our dear old fur friend we have been catless, so can only assume a whiskered individual from further down the street was sitting on his doorstep pathetically trying to gain entry. Got up to find my genius overnight kitchen slug catching method had failed & resulted in mess on the kitchen floor. Then......oh my days.....more mystery poo on the lawn. I have no idea what mammal is responsible for this. My current thinking is maybe a small fox, perhaps a cub? Our neighbour has lots of rabbits, so maybe they could be putting a bit of a dindins whiff out to any local foxes? I don't know. After I'd cleared that up, I thought I'd better go & see if anything needed picking in the veggie garden. Oh. What seemed like ages afterwards, I staggered back in with another 2 kg of courgettes, a squash, 3.2 kg of tomatoes, 2.5 kg of french beans, a colander of spinach & a small bunch of parsley. Made cream of courgette & spinach soup which we've eaten for our lunch today (froze the rest) - adapted a Cranks recipe to reduce the fat content. I must just tell you about the french beans. They are producing beans like crazy. We both love them but obviously in quantities like this, with there only being 2 of us, I'm needing to freeze a lot. For anyone reading who hasn't grown beans, they can be hugely prolific. It took me ages to pick them as you have to lift foliage & hunt for them properly as if any get missed & swell into big seedpods, production of edible ones slows right down. So by the time I'd picked 2.5kg, I was just about seeing beans everywhere I looked. But it didn't end there, as I tipped them out in the kitchen, put some in the fridge to eat with meals this weekend, weighed out 300g to make Madhur Jaffrey's spicy runner beans to serve with last night's prawn rice and then started working my way through the rest of them, topping, tailing & prepping for the freezer. Well, there were bits of bean trimmings pinging off everywhere & by then I was practically turning into a bean myself.....then out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a piece of bean trimming move. I looked at it properly. No it was perfectly still. Went back to topping & tailing. Thought I saw it move again. Wondered if I was actually losing the plot....hot weather, spending so much time standing upside down picking. It honestly looked like it was moving. I hadn't got my specs on as don't need them for general stuff, only close work & driving. Went to fetch them in case I was getting eye-strain symptoms. And then that piece of bean trimming moved about 3 cms. I mean, it really did, there was no mistaking it with my specs on. I had a better look & (thank goodness for the state of my eyes & sanity!), it wasn't a bean trimming at all!! It was a little green shield bug who had obviously come indoors with all the veg! I was so pleased I wasn't going crackers, I picked him up & told him he was going on a little trip back down the garden. I didn't take him back to the veg patch, I put him on some sunflowers in case he fancied a change of scenery. 
I shan't have to pick beans or tomatoes today, but I have been out & rounded up another 2 kg of windfall apples & picked a few more blackberries for my freezer container.  Mr F's cooking night tonight & yes, he IS making something which requires courgettes......800g of the bug*ers, I'm pleased to say! And we think we might make a joint effort to use some of our apples making a batch of brown sauce tomorrow. 
Have I done anything today in preparation for the builders arrival the week after next? Um.....that would have to be a massive 'No'!
Off to get a few more steps in now, then hope to sit by the pond & finish reading my book.
Take care all,
F x

PurpleFairy26

Gosh foxgloves your garden is really producing lots of goodies right now isn’t it. Must be so wonderful to go down and see all that lovely bounty waiting for you (apart from the moving green bean of course!) 

We’ve lots of courgettes which is fabulous and I was kindly gifted a huge box of tomatoes this week that my friend had grown. So I feel very lucky as ours aren’t quite ready yet. We haven’t had the rain or storms either so mr Purps has been on watering duty! 

foxgloves

It really is very productive this year, Purps. I'm very grateful to be blessed with so much lovely organic veg, I just wish I could gift the occasional box to someone to help with gluts. My sis is 120 miles away, my sis-in-law has plenty as her husband is a keen gardener & my best friend has an allotment! It is a shame food banks don't accept fresh produce. I know it is for health & safety reasons but ideally I'd opt to gift a veg box to a social enterprise working with UK victims of inequality.
Nice that you were given some tomatoes. They are so versatile. 
F x

Blackcats

Foxgloves!  Your description of the moving green bean made me laugh out loud 😂

PurpleFairy26

Agree with you totally foxgloves about fresh produce and food banks. It’s such a shame but I too can see why they don’t. I am on website that you can quickly post if you have a glut and others can search for things and message you. You can see on a map where they are. I’ve totally forgotten the name but when it comes back to me I’ll let you know. You just leave them at the end of the drive for the person to collect. Sometimes they offer swaps sometimes not either way it’s still going to someone who wants it and can use it.