Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Hello Saturday Savers,
Have had a useful morning in the garden - proper 'old-style' so quite money saving in its own way. I've rounded up & brought inside the last of the tomatoes (in various stages of ripening) from the greenhouse. I've picked the last of the courgettes & a few more blackberries, also brought the squashes in for storing - only 3 this year & small, as the plants took great exception to the 40 degree temperatures we suffered & never really got going again, but we will use them in a couple of nice recipes & enjoy them nevertheless. They were enormous last year, but that's gardening. We win some, we lose some.
Also trundled the wheelbarrow around collecting up potted agapanthus plants for moving into the greenhouse for the winter. Ditto geraniums which I trimmed down & re-potted. Most of those, plus a couple of succulents, have been moved to their winter quarters in the conservatory. I've also administered a radical haircut to the 'silver falls' trailing plant from one of my hanging baskets & re-potted it. I have managed to over-winter the golden variety in the past, then split it in Spring to grow on & save myself a few quid, so I thought it was worth trying with this pretty silver version. I usually do ok with overwintering geraniums. It means they are not wasted & the following Spring they get off to a good start before the tiny plug-plants have even got their pants on. I will soon be doing my garden treasure hunt with my trowel & shuttle trays hunting for self-seeded freebies to fill gaps in the borders - not that there are any yet, as I am behind schedule with cutting back & clearing.
Mr F has mowed the lawn, cleared the spent courgette plants & composted mushy windfalls - we needed to make some space for our tree-man friend to work if he is able to sort out our errant tree this week. 
I've also baked bread. It's not my cooking night & I am not intending to do any further jobs today. I really enjoyed the fresh air & being out in the garden tackling autumn tasks, but I could tell I am not at my usual levels of energy. It's hard to explain, as I am not having any trouble with my breathing post-covid, but my chest still feels tight, especially after a spell of coughing, & my legs feel as though they are having to make just that little bit more effort than usual. It's actually two weeks almost to the minute that I started having symptoms. I expect I will keep improving over the next week. 
Right, I intend to get my book finished now. It's been dragging on for ages as my concentration levels went to pieces while I was ill, & so I still don't know the identity of the skeleton in that wretched lake! But I will by tonight for sure.
Take care all - covid rates rising again. It wasn't 'just a cold' for me, I felt quite a lot worse than that, so I will be Queen Sensible of the Sensible People regarding social distancing while out & about. 
F x

scandimore

Glad you are feeling much better foxgloves, sounds like you are back to your ever productive self.
Really need to clear the garden and put beds to sleep etc. Went for a nice woodland walk instead (fairly nice way to procrastinate).
I know we have a zero waste shop about 20 minutes from us (we're fairly rural so that's actually quite a bit closer than our nearest supermarket). Will really have to check it out, I do keep meaning to. I know they do a Christmas cake mix which sounds quite exciting rather than buying lots of individual packets of fruit, nuts and spices.

foxgloves

I'm sure it will be worth investigating, @scandimore. I intend to buy quite a few festive ingredients from ours.
F

foxgloves

Hello Sunday Savers,
Gentle day, which has facilitated lots of planning. Treated ourselves to breakfast at our village farm shop (from Personal Spends, so budget-neutral) & chatted about various stuff happening in the next couple of months.
Liaised with my sis about Christmas, ordered the turkey, arranged a family meet-up later this month & synchronised my diary with Mr F's for the week ahead. Also stewed a basket of windfall apples for apple sauce today & tomorrow plus some for desserts with yoghurt, plus another pan of poached pears with brown sugar & cinnamon. Also prepped ingredients for a rice pudding, as Mr F suddenly fancied one topped with some of the cinnamon.pears. 
Still coughing, but not nearly as much & I'm hoping for a productive week ahead. I can't believe it's nearly mid-October already. If I haven't moved a few things forward by this time next week, I shall need to have a word with myself!
F x

Debsnewbudget

Well I have finally got to the end of your diary, and must say how much I enjoy your style of writing.
I did hope that you would have written your book by now though 😄
In a way you were a very bad influence on me as I have a list of 9 things to buy as well as 5 recipes to try. You were also a good influence as I got home  off my hols  and potted up my baskets and tubs with winter flowers straight away.  I am also eyeing i some weeds in the bed where I want to plant my rhubarb, some new autumn raspberries, and some blueberries. I just need to plan where they all go and how much space they need.
thank you to you and your contributors for keeping me amused and giving me so much useful information. 

Deb x

foxgloves

Oh my goodness, @Debsnewbudget. fancy getting right the way through 757 pages of my ramblings! I haven't written any more of my book & am really disappointed with myself about that, especially as I promised my Dad towards the very end of his life, that I would get it finished. I have been thinking about it recently - perhaps it can be my one & only New Year's resolution for 2023, I don't know.
Good luck with your Autumn planting. I am behind with mine but have earmarked tomorrow & Wednesday for bulb planting, so that will feel like progress.
F x

foxgloves

Hi Frugalistas,
Not a very good night's sleep, thanks to coughing & my overactive brain churning over stuff which wouldn't bother me at any other time except in the middle of the night when I'm wide awake. However, after a couple of mugs of coffee & chomping some decent toast first thing, I perked up considerably & have had a nicely productive day - a good proportion of it money saving in one way or another:
*Rubber pork duties - it did roast dinner yesterday, have divvied up leftovers for hot pork cobs & apple sauce tonight, curry on Weds, & Epic Man Stew when he fancies constructing one - it'll have done about 8 portions in total. so £1.25 per serving.
*Did Monday morning budget updates. Not overly impressed that Week 2's grocery spend was £109, but it did include a few things for future weeks & some festive ingredients. Weeks 3 & 4 will, of course, need to be lower to come in on target this budget cycle. 
*Used a 20% L*kel*nd discount voucher to buy a few Christmas presents on my list & topped up the order with coffee filter papers to secure free delivery - we get through those pretty steadily & they were out of stock in store last time I looked.
*Baked bread rolls.
*Did 2 loads of laundry on economical cycles & line-dried in the breezy sunshine.
*Defrosted leftovers from freezer for extra pack-up for Mr F's very late work shift tomorrow. 
*Dealt with home insurance renewal.....or rather, decided to cancel, rather than to renew. Renewal quote wanted an increase of £5.29 per month. Changed to a different provider for a policy with an additional level of cover for £5.62 per month less than this - a saving of £67.44 per year. I also feel happier with the level of coverage for accidental damage on the new policy. 
*Gathered a few more windfall apples.
*Prepped mincemeat - now macerating for a couple of days before it goes into jars.
*Liaised with chap over the tree-work later this week.
*Started reading a new book from the charity bookshop in town - shaping up to be a psychological thriller by the looks of things, either way it was 99p, so if I like it, great, if not, it'll go back in my charity shop bag.
*No surveys today - I do very few sites these days, but they seem a bit thin on the ground atm. Will check back tomorrow.
OK, that's me done for the day. Best wishes to everyone for a good week ahead.
F x
P.S Mouse spotted whizzing into the narrow gap at the side of the oven this morning. Have moved the trap there in case it feels like being lured out by peanut butter, but no flashing red light, so it hasn't yet been tempted. Soot & Ash very interested & clearly know there is one around. Am keeping an eye on the situation. Every. Single. Bloody. Autumn!!
x

Onebrokelady

Glad to see you are feeling a bit better Foxgloves just don't rush your recovery because I found out to my cost that this virus likes to hang around and cause problems just when you think it's gone. It took me a good 5 months to feel anything like normal the first time I had it and about 5/6 weeks the second time, sadly my chest has never been the same  and now it's October around the time I first got it my chest is wheezy again so I'm having to use an inhaler twice a day now. I just hope I don't get it again,I can't cope with a third go. 

foxgloves

Sorry to hear you have been left with longstanding Covid problems, @Onebrokelady. The tightness in my tubes is still there, but it is reducing. Usually, when I get a cold, my trachea & tubes tighten up at the onset & then normalise as the cold symptoms get going. With this bout of Covid though, the tightness remained throughout & is only lessening just now. I've been quite steady in terms of making sure I spend at least some of the day sitting down. I spoke to a friend yesterday & when I said we'd both had Covid since I last saw him, he did a quick tot up & said that including us, he knew 17 people who have had it in about the last 3 weeks. It's definitely doing the Autumn rounds.
Can absolutely understand you wanting to avoid another bout of it.
F x

milann

I still find it astonishing the range of symptoms that covid throws out…..some don’t know they’ve had it and others really suffer badly for a long period of time. I was chatting to my window cleaner yesterday - just into his 40s. He had a heart attack about  6 months ago….they put it down to sticky blood  because he’d had the vaccine too soon after having had the actual virus. It’s his round and he is basically just driving and supervising his gang of lads now rather than physically working.