Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Suffolk_lass

The honey processing here has taken over. The garage (cart lodge, outside and the kitchen). Now Mr Sl has done his bit, I need to take the extracted supers back to the bees - we call them wet - they retrieve all the remaining honey and wax and use it in the active colony, allowing us to store them dry over winter. An awful lot of faff for not much return for my bees. Once the extractor is removed I plan to redeploy the produce freezer, from the pig shed to the cart lodge. It will involve much faffing!

Is that installation you went to see the transport related one @foxgloves?

foxgloves

@Suffolk_lass - No, it was 'Helios' - aka a giant sun suspended from the ceiling of local minster. V effective & thought-provoking. We went to see 'Gaia' & 'Moon' too.

You are so busy with your bees. Mr F is suddenly v keen to sort & defrost freezers though not great timing as have a fish box arriving next week.

foxgloves

Morning Campers,

Didn't get round to posting yesterday as Ash went awol & we didn't see him for over 24 hrs. He then returned looking worried & wolfed his way through 2 pouches & some biscuits before going outside & having a big drink from the hedgehog bowl. He may have been shut in somewhere, though he shuns people & as an ex-feral, he may just have pulled an all-nighter before finding a hidey-hole in the jungle garden for a long snooze. Whatever he was doing, we got increasingly worried as not turning up for breakfast is very unusual.

Despite the increasing worry, there were some budget-friendly efforts:

*Bailed out 7 cans of bathwater so as to water front courtyard with supplies we'd already paid for.

*Garden pickings: Tomatoes, courgettes, beans.

*Made chutney.

*Blanched & froze 3 bags of beans.

*Did a little bit of knitting for the present bag.

*Cleaned bathroom - still plenty of bath bubbles & reed diffuser liquid for refilling. Found an old bottle of hard floor cleaner which came with our previous carpet cleaner. As our new one only does carpets, I am using this liquid in my spray mop rather than waste it.

*Split a pack of mince as realised I didn't need it all for today's recipe. Froze the surplus for a future tamale pie.

Back later, hopefully with a decent list for today. Aiming for breakfast by 9am. I want all the veg watering & today's veg picking done by then.

F x

KajiKita

I hate it when our cats do the AWOL thing … I am very glad that wanderer is safely returned. Please give him extra scritches from his MSE aunties 😉

That was a very productive day 😊

KK

Sun_Addict

What a relief Ash is back home. I wonder what he was on with. My young cat often disappears for hours and doesn't come for her breakfast, in fact she rarely comes in the house in summer. She was part feral before we got her, very wary of people and prefers sleeping in bushes to comfy beds/chairs.

foxgloves

@KajiKita & @Sun_Addict - Yes, the feline disappearing acts are such a worry, aren't they? Before he was trapped by the Cat Rescue people, Ash had been living rough in somebody's garden for months. He was about 2 years old, unneutered & no sign of any owners.The timings make me wonder if he was a kitten abandoned during Lockdown, but we'll never know, only that he's terrified of anyone other than us. The vet told the rescue volunteers to return him to where he was found as he was feral but the Rescue decided to give him a chance & although scared of people, they said he did start to relax a little while in a foster pen. That may have been because he wasn't having to fend for himself for food & shelter. We adopted him & soon tempted him into having strokes & fuss (which he loves) by proffering little bits of tuna. He loves a lap & spends a lot of the colder months indoors as close to the radiator as possible, but in summer, he defaults to his old feral ways, coming home, but mostly for food & fuss & then spending long periods (inc all night) lurking/snoozing outside in hidey holes. For example, he was waiting outside on the doorstep with the milk this morning, came in for breakfast, sat on my lap for a fuss, then took himself back off to who knows where. He usually turns up late afternoon. Yesterday was a worry because we saw him at Cat Teatime, then not for 24 hours. He will have heard me calling him & rattling biscuits but he won't come until he's ready, & he's more likely to heed Mr F calling him than me. There's a new cat on our street so he's maybe been stalking him, idk. We were both very relieved when he re-appeared, anyway.

foxgloves

Afternoon Sunbeams,

Useful day on the whole but it's been one of those where, for some reason, everything has taken longer than I expected, so I am bumping a few things to tomorrow. Budget-friendly efforts as follows:

*Watered veg garden as sparingly as I could get away with & still be able to have live veg plants.

*Today's garden pickings: Courgettes, lots of blackberries (had to go back to fetch the big colander), loads of basil.

*Made last batch of pesto for the year. I use the quantities from Delia's recipe but substitute things now & again to use what I've got….so today's batch contained reduced fat cheddar & cashew nuts. Divvied into pots (8) & frozen.

*Entered a competition.

*Did a survey. Aug PA earnings could be decent if I stick at it.

*Did a few budget updates, which should have been speedy as just grocery budget, paying the piano tuner & a transfer from the Dentist Pot to transfer for our check-ups on Monday. I noticed that my CC balance is significantly less than it should be (I don't mean in an endebted way as both our cards have been paid off at the end of every month since we came to our senses around the whole subject of money) but because I knew roughly what the balance should be at this stage of the month & it was wrong. Didn't need to go far down the financial forensics road before I spotted that like a numpty, I have paid a transaction off my CC account which was paid for with Mr F's CC. This is in fact a Double-Numpty Award moment because his card ONLY had to be used because he managed to lock my PIN. Then I compounded it by failing to remember that his card had been used somewhere we pretty much only EVER use mine, & paying it off the wrong one. Ah well, I have mostly corrected this error today, just need to ensure that a final £34 of the next payment to my card is sent to his, iyswim.

*Boxed up my sister's birthday presents - shopped a decent box from home but actually had to buy wrapping paper!! I honestly think this was the first time I've needed to buy that for years, so I have obviously made good progress through my recycled stash!

Everything else I thought I'd do today can wait until tomorrow or even early next week. I am making meatballs tonight - an old recipe I've been making for years. They are known as 'Aunty Foxgloves' meatballs' because back when one of our nephews was about 6 & staying a few days, he came to ask me what was for dinner & when I said 'Spaghetti & meatballs', he raced down the garden punching the air, shouting 'Aunty Foxgloves is making meatballs' at the top of his voice. Then he returned to ask me how many actual balls there would be so he could divide it by 6 & work out how many he was likely to get! (He did go on to be a maths boffin!)

Right, time to move,

Enjoy your Friday nights, all.

F x

KajiKita

Love the nephew meatballs story! Fabulous 😊👏❤️

And actually, thank you for being honest and open about the CC mild-muddle. I’m still making mistakes and doing things like this periodically and for you to acknowledge that it is still happening to you, makes me feel so much less useless! 😉

KK

Blackcats

so glad Ash is home safely. Our silly boy got himself stuck in the garden at the back of ours a few weeks ago. He's quite elderly and I think jumping down over the fence was easier than jumping back up.
Don't laugh but we lowered a large basket full of dream ees over the fence and tried to explain to him that if he climbed in we would hoist the basket back over the fence. When that failed MrBC made a plank into a slope for him to walk up - failed! The neighbours were away so we were going to climb over the fence to rescue him when to our joy we heard the clickerty thump of the cat flap and he was home and acting nonchalant but hungry.

KajiKita

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82095681#Comment_82095681

I’m not laughing. I am reminded of the time Madame Chloe was up the top of the Scot’s pine at the bottom of our garden, howling dismally and looking really scared. Mr KK went off to get the three section ladder to rescue her. By the time he’d lugged it down the garden, she’d come down herself hadn’t she! 🙄😂😂

I think cats just like to have an audience for the drama and then when the hoomans are distracted, quietly find a solution in their own way! 😉

KK