Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

themadvix

Another vote for continued garden content from me - it certainly teaches me stuff and inspires me to do clever stuff like dividing plants and take cuttings etc.

marionmgcars

I don’t garden, but enjoy hearing about your garden exploits.  Thanks. 

Baileys_Babe

I enjoy hearing about your garden exploits I learn such a lot.

Suffolk_lass

I also enjoy hearing about your gardening exploits. As you know, we also grow quite a lot of our food and my freezer soup packs of pre-prepared squash are coming into their own (along with bottled fruit and tomatoes!) now everything is a bit bleugh before next season's explosion.

Moorviews

I am greatly looking forward to the garden posts and am delighted that they have started already! 

Thank you for the politics comment earlier and I do concur. I forget that not everyone is as cynical as some of us are and keep hoping that people will see the connections between the politicians that they elect and the policies that they enact. Living in a predominantly blue region of the UK I hear all the same kind of remarks. With the addition of complaints about lack of and high cost of housing and the excessive second/holiday homes in the area, however, any changes in thinking and allegiance will be very slow, if they occur at all. 

rtandon27

FG - just love whatever it is that you choose to 'waffle on' about! 🤣🤣🤣
Your rhythm of life is very inspirational and helps remind us how important those day-to-day habits/hobbies are to general well-being and happiness!

Blackcats

I enjoy your gardening comments too and learn lots from you as I am an unenthusiastic gardener who hopes that miraculously I'll have a beautiful garden.   I used to think that spending lots and lots of barclaycard's money at the garden centre would help me achieve my dream garden.  Needless to say the required effort on my part did not happen and sometimes the trays of pretty plants didn't even get planted before they withered and died.  

foxgloves

Morning Campers!
Thanks for all your positive comments about the gardening content of my diary. I do tackle everything very much from the point of view of money-saving & sustainability, so that is why I include it. As I said, it used to be a big area of over-spend (& overdraft!) back in the Spendy Era, so much like my regular frittering on all-things vintage, it has had to have a significant re-shape as I transitioned away from borrowing into the era of economic responsibility. Mr F seems quite keen to get this year's plan drawn up showing which veg is destined for which beds this weekend, so I should soon be able to tell you what food we are aiming to grow. At the moment, things are just where I'd expect them to be - the chillies have been sown, the rhubarb is sprouting, the sorrel is putting out some good new growth, enough to add a few of its lemony leaves to salads, our October-sown garlic is sprouting (just 2 cloves were no-shows) & the greenhouse-sown rocket I started off in the Autumn in re-used grow bags is still providing fairly regular cuts.
Anyway, today's small budget-helping stuff:
*Cleaned the house using minimal products & washable cloths. Mr F said he was happy to run the finned vacuum around when he gets home (he is on an early finish today), so I wasn't going to let that offer pass. I did vacuum my piano though!
*Prepped & blanched some carrots which were getting to the bendy stage. Now frozen & certainly sufficient to put with a roast dinner at some point.
*Made wholemeal bread - well, almost....it's in the tin working through its 2nd proving.
*Wrote out a new library wish list including a new title on money-saving gardening - also the next 2 novels in a crime series I am enjoying - MC Craven's Washington Poe series, set up in the Lake District. 
*Checked for surveys - none so far today. 
*Postie brought me 2 vouchers - one was for 20% off at the shop where one would go for a new body - well that will be useful for our city centre trip later this month, as I will be able to stock up on moisturiser. The other was a voucher for £5 off a cafe at a garden we are already planning to visit soon. 
*Updated grocery budget. So far, both Week 1 (Sainsberg online) & Week 2 groceries (Waitbl00m) have come in at below our weekly target spend. I am pleased about this as this is a '5-week month' for grocery shopping (it's just the way our budget cycle falls) & I haven't budgeted any extra as I think this encourages us to overspend, then we still end up with a lower-than-is-useful amount for the final shop. I am sure that writing the monthly master meal plans is having a positive effect & Mr F says he definitely agrees.
Time to go & find some lunch. That will no doubt trip Soot off to come in search of food. They had their elevenses biscuits today, crunched them & took themselves off. Ten minutes later, they were back (both of them), in search of their dinner!! Ash had the grace to give this up as a bad job, but Soot spent ages scouring the floor tiles to demonstrate that he was in such a state of starvation that he was hoping to find a couple of tiny crumbs of something which may just be sufficient to sustain him until cat dinner time! Her is such a trier.....although not as much of a drama queen as my first cat, who would at that point add in a couple of entirely fake little tubercular-sounding coughs in the hope that I may take pity on a poor weak cat clearly about to breathe his last. And no need to feel sorry for him, as much like Soot, he was built like a brick outhouse!
Wishing you all a decent Friday,
F x

ziggy2407

I loved the "Washington Poe" books and am eagerly looking forward to his latest - enjoy!

I love all things at "Chez Foxgloves" and have learnt so much over the years.  

Baileys_Babe

Thank you for the author recommendation, I have requested the first book for a few months as I already have too many books on my reading pile.