Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Oh my days.....that will be next, I'm sure, PiP. He already knows that if he does a swift little pounce on a cat biscuit bag, the puff of air squished inside is often sufficient to open the seal. He's just had a shout for jumping up onto the chopping board.
F

BrilliantButScary

foxgloves said:

Oh my days.....that will be next, I'm sure, PiP. He already knows that if he does a swift little pounce on a cat biscuit bag, the puff of air squished inside is often sufficient to open the seal. He's just had a shout for jumping up onto the chopping board.
F

Have you seen the 'Slinky Malinki' books by Lynley Dodd?

foxgloves

I have indeed, @BrilliantButScary & very amusing they are too!
F

foxgloves

Morning Campers,
Just contemplating best use of the day, which has again dawned both bright & frosty. I only need to sort a big pile of dry laundry & iron 2 or 3 things & write the grocery shopping list. I would like to finish my book so that I can return it to the library & watch the final episode of 'The city is ours'. Very low effort meal tonight - just 2 portions of spicy sausage & lentil hotpot to defrost & rice to cook......which means I will have plenty of time for getting outside & progressing garden jobs.
Hmmm, off to fire up the coffee machine & make some toast while I think about which to prioritise. Ash ate all his breakfast in one go this morning which at least prevented a repeat of yesterday's food-raiding shennanigans.
Wishing everyone a pleasantly productive day. 
F x

BrimfulofSascha

Foxgloves that sounds like a lovely day. Enjoy!

foxgloves

Thanks, @BrimfulofSascha. It was both enjoyable & productive - my favourite kind of day..

foxgloves

Morning Campers,
A promising pink sunrise here & it's looking to be another nice day.
Boring but necessary task last night as we decided to try & sort out what exactly is messing up my spreadsheets. Disabled Co-pilot (see back to @rtandon27's comment if you need to do that) but this didn't solve the issue which turned out to be an MS & Google Onedrive incompatibility problem when saving documents. We have got around it on a functional basis but it's annoying that updates have caused this as everything worked perfectly well before. Mr F raised the issue of whether we want to continue paying an annual MS subscription if we are having to 'work around' things rather than use them to our advantage so he intends to research basic free packages in good time before next renewal date.
That was a dull start to a morning post, wasn't it?
On today's agenda......
*No money will be spent except necessary fuel for the car.
*Will be doing a round-up of veg to go with tonight's home made fish pie. Any additional veg will be roasted with garlic & rosemary & frozen as a base for another meal. 
*Make tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Usual checks on plantlets which are not enjoying such extremes of tempersture.
*Free stretching session will be weeding & forking over the borders around our front courtyard, dead-heading, etc, then direct-sowing some seeds (free) - probably love-in-a-mist, cornflowers & Californian poppies (a pinky variety). I rarely direct sow as the emerging seedlings are instant mollusc breakfast, but they are less of a problem at the front because it's drier. 
*Might remove a bit more hawkweed root from back borders afterwards to make best use of garden wheelie collection tomorrow.
Will also finish the last 3 chapters of my book & start a new audiobook. Oh, & the missing strawberry runners I ordered turned up yesterday so I was able to get them added to the new tiered troughs with plenty of home made compost added.
Right, I think that's enough....both jobs for today & yakking, so time for some make-up, toast & coffee! Wishing you all a pleasantly money-saving day,
F x

Suffolk_lass

At my bee conference over the weekend I attended a session on growing things in your garden for pollinators and Hawkweed was mentioned as being a good perennial native wildflower for all sorts of pollinators, providing you designate a wild area and control it's creeping habit of making more plants. I thought of you!

foxgloves

@Suffolk_lass - Yes, insects do seem to like it, but the problem is that it isn't controllable here. Ours is the yellow one - I don't know if the 'fox & cubs' variety is less invasive. The roots I'm currently digging up sometimes have 3 or 4 emerging plantlets just on a fairly short length, much like bindweed. Even in my relaxed, cottage-style garden which is tolerant of wild flowers, the stuff is an absolute menace. Btw, lots of bees visiting our garden atm. Our lovely tawny mining bees are making their cute little lawn burrows & I've also seen a couple I didn't recognise visiting pulmonaria & dwarf comfrey. I must get my nice bee ID chart out ready for hopefully getting a closer look.
F

badmemory

Your issues with spreadsheets are why I kept an old computer that never goes on line & gets updated/corrupted.  This has all my spreadsheets.  I had no intention of paying to access my own data.  I just press a button to get things (mouse, keyboard & screen) switched over to the other computer.