Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Sun_Addict

What a fantastic harvest Mrs F 😍 An Italian neighbour grows grapes very successfully around the front of his house so will definitely investigate growing them in the greenhouse. 

In contrast my courgettes and tomatoes haven’t done very well this year, I think I planted them too late because we were on holiday early May plus the hot weather didn’t do them any favours. The peppers and basil have done really well though. There are a lot of aubergines but still too small to pick. 

Tescodealqueen

Don’t take me too literally I am South Yorkshire so down the road might be pushing it. Family are just up the road in Darlington😂

foxgloves

Not that far then, @Tescodealqueen. We actually nearly went to Brodsworth Hall this morning, but changed our mind & visited a different neighbouring county instead.
I've lived in this county for an astonishing 40 years, but my heart is (& always has been) in East Anglia).
F x

Tescodealqueen

Brodsworth Hall is just down the road we haven’t been round the house as it was closed for a while but the gardens are lovely. Must go back one day you always miss what’s on your doorstep. We lived in Shropshire for several years and didn’t go inside the Ironbridge Gorge museums til the month before we left to live in Wiltshire 

QueenJess

A bit of shopping from home today for you. I use lots of notes at work and saved so much one sided paper from my parents/DH over the years. I got 25 pieces, tore them into quarters, got some cardboard from a food box cut to a slightly bigger size, covered the cardboard with brown packing paper from a parcel, hole punched it all and then tied it together with string from a clothes label I had saved. Then I stuck a couple of stickers on from the kids stash and voilà, I have a notebook. Even better is that once finished I can remove the pages and replace them

foxgloves

@QueenJess, I'm awarding that bit of shopping from home a resounding 10/10 ! I also reuse clean-on-one side A4 paper. I slice it into quarters & fasten it together at the top with a bulldog clip. Not nearly as resourceful as yours, but useful as a desk pad (& one in the kitchen) for writing notes to myself.
It's very satisfying upcycling random things into useful stuff.
F x

foxgloves

Hello September Savers,
Well, much as I'd love be telling you that I've spent today dealing with copious amounts of garden produce, it would be a distinctly pants-on-fire thing to say. We've been out for a walk around the grounds of a big Tudor hall instead. Most pleasant. Tonight we'll be eating some of the ratatouille Mr F made yesterday. That used 2 peppers, the remaining aubergines, courgettes & tomatoes, as well as some of our homegrown garlic. I've just turned a bowl of apples & 300g blackberries into a crumble base - crumble topping also made - so really have made virtually no inroads into our huge apple crop & no further dint in the tomato hoard. Never mind. I have been out of routines this week as Mr F has been on leave..Next week, I need to get a serious wriggle on. I have brought my newest slow cooker book down to the garden bench for inspiration.
Re Winter Plan - one element of this was pulling back on Christmas spending & getting present-buying finished earlier. ....all part of being sensible throughout these times of worsening inflation & the unknown. The yarn I ordered arrived & I've cast on my sister's Scandinavian-style mittens. While I was ferreting around in my yarn cabinet looking for DPNs, I found a new, unstarted ball of self-patterning sock yarn which I'd completely forgotten about. It's in shades of red, blue, tawny colours & I decided to use it to make a pair of socks for my friend's birthday (we have a lot of winter birthdays). Her favourite colour is red & I think they will be nice & warm when she's working on her allotment. So I've cast them on too. I will knit my sister's complicated colourwork mittens when I can concentrate & the easy-peasy socks while watching TV in the evenings. I have a couple of other little things for my friend's birthday (2 were nice little sales finds) so with the socks & probably a bar of interesting chocolate or nice packet of biscuits, that's another gift sorted out on a minimal spend. A shopping from home success!
Well, Ash has come to join me in the last late afternoon rays of sun. He now adores strokes & any amount of fuss, & although he's still very nervous of other people, it's hard to believe he's that same cat who arrived here early this year, terrified of his own shadow. I digress from vegetable negligence however.....
If I am not reporting at least some money-saving tomato-based activity by early next week, you have my permission to take me to task by refusing to communicate with me apart from use of tomato emojis. 
Peace,
F x

QueenJess

foxgloves said:

@QueenJess, I'm awarding that bit of shopping from home a resounding 10/10 ! I also reuse clean-on-one side A4 paper. I slice it into quarters & fasten it together at the top with a bulldog clip. Not nearly as resourceful as yours, but useful as a desk pad (& one in the kitchen) for writing notes to myself.
It's very satisfying upcycling random things into useful stuff.
F x

Ooh thanks 😊 . I did have one with a clip before that but I did a rubbish job and ended up not able to use all the paper and the thing eventually squeezed itself off the pad and I had papers everywhere again!

A strange question in case anyone knows….. I have glass milk bottles I rinse before putting them out for the milkman. If I used the rinse water on my indoor plants would that be ok for them? It seems a waste for it to go down the sink.

foxgloves

Interesting question about the milk bottle rinsing water. We have glass bottles too, but it's never occurred to me to use the rinsing water on houseplants. I can't see that it would cause problems to the plants but I would wonder whether regular milk residue might in time build up a bit of an 'off' smell with the pots being indoors. I'd use it on outdoor plants though.
F

Suffolk_lass

My recollection is that my Grandma's kitchen always smelled rather sour and there was a bit of white mould on her one and only houseplant from using the milk bottle rinsings. I know some camp-sites don't like it, also. I would use it on an outside plant that is not too sheltered (so that any residue is diluted and dispersed by rain)