Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Sun_Addict

Lovely to see such a beautiful natural garden in bloom. I bought some foxgloves seeds this year, we did have some a few years ago but Mr SA dug them up for some reason 😕

foxgloves

Well, they might have gone manky, @Sun_Addict. Sometimes, foxgloves will live to flower for another year, but they are biennials, rather than perennials, so they geminate, grow & put on leaf the first year, then flower their 2nd year. Then they usually die off or go manky when people would probably pull them out anyway. Usually though, they set a decent amount of seed & the best plant babies can be moved to where you'd like them to flower the next year. 
F

Baileys_Babe

We used to have lots of foxgloves in this garden this year we only appear to have one which is very sad, I'm hoping to collect some seeds to see if I can grow some as leaving it to chance is not happening.

rtandon27

We also have one foxglove that mysteriously appeared out of nowhere!  OH insists there were some when we moved in two years ago but I'm sure he's imaging them!

Blackcats

Beautiful garden.  Thank you for sharing.  I feel like I've wandered into a scene from Gardeners World.

I'm trying hard to be successful with sweet peas for the first time ever.  I verbally encourage them every day so I'm hoping that will incentivise them to flourish.  My ambition is to be able to pick a bunch for indoors.  I have some teeny tiny vases so I haven't set the bar for quantity too high. 

foxgloves

@Blackcats - The trick with sweet peas is to keep picking them, as this delays them setting seed pods & keeps the blooms going for longer. They don't like to get too dry & also like a bit of plant food now & again. 
I need to pick a bunch today.
F

foxgloves

Morning m'dears,
Today will be a no-spend day & will include the following:
*Bake sourdough loaf.
*Use last of Sunday's l/o roast chicken for spicy pittas & salad for tonight's meal.
*Choose a week's worth of meals from our monthly meal plan.
*Write grocery shopping list.
*Make tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Plant overwintered geraniums into their summer courtyard containers.
"Tackle overgrown shrub - there will be a lot of stretching going on with this, as I think it will require the loppers.
*Try & get a few surveys done this afternoon.
*Feed cukes & any tomatoes which have started fruiting.
That is quite enough for jobs - for leisure time, I intend to finish the last chapter of my book & progress my current genealogy project.
Have a good day, everyone.
F x

Cheery_Daff

Foxgloves, I've just had the biggest revelation while reading your post 😱 I never distinguish between non-job work and leisure 😱 I think I have in my head, because I don't have children or anyone really depending on me, everything I do is 'for me' or 'me time'. I mean, I think of cleaning the toilet as a task of course 😂 but gardening? Even though it often feels like a chore? Well, gardening is 'enjoyable',  isn't it, and therefore it must be leisure, even if I'm spending 2 hours strimming or digging holes. Decluttering? Well, I'm 'homemaking',  making my home beautiful, and therefore that's a 'for me' activity, isn't it? 

I mean, I do practically distinguish i think - I'll have a list of do banking, change sheets, then at the end have a bath, so I must have a distinction in my head somewhere.

But there are so many things on the borderline that feel like 'shoulds' as well as 'wants'.  Gardening, mending, DIY, exercise, batch cooking, playing my flute (specifically, practicing pieces i need to play for the band I'm voluntarily in) - are they work, or fun?! 

Not expecting an actual answer from you of course 😂😂 Just saw you distinguishing between work and leisure, and your work list involved things I often class as 'leisure'  (although they don't always FEEL like leisure) and it made me ponder... 😂😂

foxgloves

Hi @Cheery_Daff - Some interesting thoughts there about the delineation between 'household work' & 'leisure'. When I hooked up with Mr F, we both worked full time in professional public sector jobs. All household chores were shared - we took turns to cook & shared all the cleaning & chores. We were also responsible for our own ironing. When I went part-time, I was basically working half of my previous hours, I increased my household chores to, I would say, about 75%, which added in all the laundry & more ironing....for instance, I took on the ironing of household linens, shared stuff, etc, but Mr F still ironed his own clothes. I cooked on an extra night & was budgeting properly by then, so doing most of that too.
When I took VR, Mr F continued to work full time, so part of the agonisingly long discussions we had about whether I should just bite the bullet & leave work, involved me wanting a role, as I too, had, had a management role at work & I still wanted to use my organisational skills, etc. So I said I would take on the management of the household, which is what I have done. I should stress that Mr F still inputs a significant amount (this isn't a blowback to the 1950s, women didn't burn their bras for nothing) - he enjoys cooking, so he cooks Fri - Sun. If he isn't working on my cleaning day, he will almost always volunteer to run the vacuum around, & he does the heavier garden tasks which I am too short or not sufficiently strong enough to do. He also maintains the car....not because he's a bloke, we both drive it, it's a shared vehicle, but because I can't stand car cleaning, topping up washer bottles, oil, etc, I find it really boring...though enjoy driving.
So that's the background context of the work/leisure thing you mentioned. I do enjoy cooking, baking, preserving, gardening, etc, BUT if it's a task I am doing primarily to benefit the household, then that is Household Work. This would include all the regular stuff - cleaning, cooking, preserving, growing veg, gardening generally, tidying, laundry, ironing, mending, decluttering, budgeting & financial/household admin, arranging workmen where necessary, maintaining wildlife pond, meal planning, writing shopping lists, overseeing food stores, etc. Yes, I do enjoy a lot of these things, especially gardening & baking.....not cleaning, obviously, or horrid ironing, but I am still doing all of them as part of my household work to keep things running smoothly, looking good & in the case of the garden, also productive. I also count doing surveys as something which primarily benefits the household, as it's earning extra money.
I see my leisure activities very much as things like reading, playing the piano, knitting, general crafting, personal projects such as genealogy, writing letters (as in to friends & family, not rants to HMRC, etc), going for walks, outings to historic places of sites of natural beauty, listening to audio books/music, watching films/TV, salsacise DVDs (which I haven't done for ages, as no longer have the floor space, but used to do regularly), writing my journal, garden wildlife spotting & recording species, entering competitions, etc. I see all these as things I choose to do in my leisure time for myself. 
Of course there is some crossover. For instance, I love organising Christmas/birthday presents for people & wrapping them, but this is something which I am doing for both of us, so it comes under the 'Household Work' category. There are also times when knitting crosses into this category - for instance, if I have agreed to knit something for someone for which I will get paid, or if I need to finish something by a deadline which is a gift for somebody. This would then cross into 'job' territory, & I would plan time for it in my daily tasks.
Well, that has resulted in a lengthy post, hasn't it? But I think it was an interesting question. 
I am lucky that Mr F, despite growing up in a very traditional working class community where the women traditionally did all the domestic stuff while the men went out to work & did not participate in the domestic domain, was taught to cook, clean & tidy up after himself. He is also a big believer in equalities & is always asking me if he can help with anything. I often find jobs already done, because he's spotted that something needs attention & has just got on with it. I am happy to run the household on the day-to-day basis as outlined above, as the non-earning partner in the relationship, but I was not put on this earth to wait hand & foot on men & I do sometimes feel my heart sink when reading other diaries, that men still seem to expect this.......or rather they have achieved it by default.
Well, I can see another survey has popped up, so I shall do that, then go & check what the cats are up to because I think I can hear clawing.
F x

milann

Lovely garden 🌷🌸👍