Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

And now for today's budget-positive tasks:
*Decided to cut the loaf I baked yesterday in two & freeze half as I can't see it getting eaten before it begins to go stale.
*Watered greenhouse veg.
*Garden pickings = Courgettes, french beans, spring onions, cucumber, 2 aubergines, carrots, coriander & jalapeno chillies.
*Prepped & froze the french beans.
*Turned the chillies into jalapeno sauce. Mr F loves this so I usually make it in double batches but today's was a single, as I am growing a new variety of jalapeno this year & the chillies looking so different to my usual variety, I just wanted to check that they were sufficiently hot for the sauce. Turned out fine. A decent heat to it & a classic fruity jalapeno flavour. It's a dwarf variety which has full-sized fruits. Very prolific so far so I would grow it again. 
*Will finally be using up a half lemon tonight, which has been sitting in the fridge annoying me. Am making the Thai-style spiced fish with noodles recipe from Pinch of Nom. I had completely forgotten about this recipe. We both like it & I shall take the opportunity to stir-fry some courgette batons with soy sauce to accompany it (on the basis that if I use 6 courgettes tonight, there will be 8 more to pick by tomorrow morning!)
*Re-pegged the larger items from yesterday's rained-on laundry. All dried very swiftly in this breezy sunshine.
*Rounded up a returns bag for the library & added a few titles to my wish-list.
*Did a little bit of weeding with my grabber. It's a good way of getting a few extra steps while also making progress against silly little weeds like the endless euphorbia. 
*Planned a very low-spend weekend with Mr F. With the weather forecast promising gotterdammerung, we have decided to stay at home & get the place clean, sort out guest bedding, etc, as we have guests arriving at the end of the month for a few days. I'm really looking forward to this (my sister & youngest nephew) as have such a very small family. While I wouldn't faff with forensic levels of cleaning for guests coming, I do like the place to look nice, so it's best foot forward & on with the marigolds tomorrow. Mr F sounds well up for getting stuck into some serious vacuuming too....the crevice tool was mentioned, as were the downstairs windows!! 
Right, that's enough chatting for today. I'm going to see if I can get a couple of surveys done, then find a new book to read from my copious pile of charity bookshop finds.
Wishing everyone a fab Friday,
F xx

foxgloves

@Sun_Addict - re your question.....I don't really have a problem with snails & slugs eating courgettes. I might find the very occasional courgette with a mark on it from where a snail has been rasping at it, but this is rare & tbh, they seem pretty free from pests. They are more vulnerable when the plants are small & the weather is very wet i.e last year, I lost an entire young tromboncino plant in just 2 nights because the molluscs were out in force in that very wet Spring. I find that snails are more of a problem with french beans, although I have grown dwarf varieties this year in quite a high-sided raised bed which they don't yet seem to have discovered. We do have a resident hedgehog, so I imagine he is eating a fair few molluscs when he finds them. When I grow climbing beans, I do find the young plants come under mollusc attack so I save eggshells, dry them & crush them into shards, then scatter them around each plant when I first transplant them. 
Sorry I'm not able to be more helpful. 
F

DawnW

Thanks @foxgloves. I will try that.

PennysIntoPounds

Cleaning and preparing the gaff for guests you're looking forward to is so much more pleasing than doing it because its on the rota of things to do isn't it. I hope they know they're very honoured guests what with the crevice tool making an appearance!
Glad to hear Soot is in fine form for his age and you managed to save the dragonfly 

foxgloves

@PiP - He was so pleased with himself. You'd have thought he'd brought down a drone, not an insect, even though it was a huge one. 

foxgloves

I appear to have woken up with a serious case of Declutteritis this morning, which bodes well for the state of my home office/hobby room (Foxgloves HQ)!
F x

KajiKita

foxgloves said:

I appear to have woken up with a serious case of Declutteritis this morning, which bodes well for the state of my home office/hobby room (Foxgloves HQ)!
F x

Oooh … please waft some of that over here for me to use in the office / hobby room here! 😊

Good luck and I will be interested to hear what decisions you make on what to keep, how to store, what to relocate etc 😊

KK

badmemory

I could do with some of it here too.  Every time I try I just seem to land up with more stuff out & in my face.

foxgloves

Hello Lovely Readers,
Well, I thoroughly enjoyed a decluttering session up in my little HQ room this morning. A large bag of books & my old sewing machine have already gone off to the charity shop but I still had several bags & piles of stuff on the floor so I've had a sort out & rationalised storage. Was able to shop a nice wooden crate from our loft to store my wrappings stash & that liberated a large lidded crate for storing dress fabric. All my odds & sods of fabric have been sorted into 2 bags & I cut up some small useless pieces of cotton jersey for cleaning cloths while I was at it. I will be able to reduce this to a single bag as some of it is old duvet cover/sheet, etc, I will be using as toiles until my dressmaking confidence improves, & can be chucked as soon as I know I have the fit right. 
I don't seem to have got rid of all that much today tbh, it's been more a case of reorganising some of my craft/hobby stuff & my bookshelves so as to make best use of space. There is a pile of stuff for my sister which she'll take when I see her next weekend, so that's been moved out into the spare bedroom. It's all decluttering one way or another.
Mr F vacuumed all of upstairs & I tried to rennovate the landing carpet after yet more ravaging from Soot's monster claws 😡.
A no-spend day.
Garden pickings: 6 more courgettes, blackberries
Did a quick pantry audit of preserves & sorted the jars into 2024 & 2025  so that we can eat the older ones first. 
Took advantage of a dry spell to go out & do some weeding with the grabber while the earth was more yielding. Then marched up & down until I'd achieved my daily minimum steps. I haven't been sedentary for 86 days in a row!
Mr F's cooking night so I'm going to read, cast my eye over the crossword & stroke cats.
The weather forecast was defo over-egged for here, I think. We've had some very useful showers but none of the 'torrential downpours' mentioned & certainly no storms. I did at one point think I could hear thunder in the distance, but it was just a neighbour at the rear of us getting a bit enthusiastic with his wheelie bins.
Enjoy your Saturday nights, all. 
F x

  

PennysIntoPounds

😂 at your neighbour not being thunder

Sounds a marvellous day, I also got declutteritis, must be something in the air. Autumn probably what with this odd weather. I think we got your torrentials as well as our forecast ones!