£2,576.79 to clear by March

DD265

After speaking to the financial advisor, I made the decision to increase my pension contributions to 8%. Despite this I actually took home £55 more than normal when we got paid yesterday, so it feels like a win-win. And I'm eligible for a small (£250 pre-tax) bonus from work for something - it's nice to be recognised! That's in addition to my final bonus for the 2025 calendar year, though I don't know the amount of that yet, I'm hoping it'll be around £2k after tax. I'll be using this to pay that extra £200 off the smaller credit card, but then if all goes to plan, I want to finally get the stud wall in the garage moved to enlarge the utility.

My car had its MOT today, which it passed with flying colours; didn't even need any work doing beforehand to avoid advisories. I'm also partway through sorting out our home insurance, because in October when we were doing the car insurance renewal, adding the house saved us hundreds overall, but that policy wasn't kicking in until our renewal in this May. I've had to put husband's laptop on the policy, both due to the value and to arrange cover for it outside of the house. Tomorrow (they were closed this evening) I will cancel the automatic renewal of this years policy; I did think if you were able to purchase the policy online, you had to be able to cancel it online, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The county show for my vegetables is now a week away and it will be such a relief when it's all over. There's just a bit too much going on (I am definitely working hard for those bonuses) and I want to concentrate on the actual allotment. That is largely my plan for the weekend though; vegetables, houseplants, garden and allotment. And food shopping. How exciting 😂

MillQueen

That's brilliant the car has passed its MOT, phew another year of worry-free motoring. Pension contributions of 8% is very good and future-you will be very thankful you did this. What a wholesome weekend you have in store, filled with plants and vegetables. That might be nice after working so hard.

DD265

It's a while since I've posted but we've been super busy!

The show was in May - boy am I glad that's over! I did exhibit in all four classes:

• My beetroot were just a thin root, no bulb
• My new potato (still attached to the root/stem/leaves) was almost the size of a small marble
• My spring onions were almost 25cm long but nowhere near the required 15mm girth
• Perpetual spinach =/= spinach.

I came last in every class, even the one where I was the only entry! Never again, but on the positive side I wasn't disqualified so I did better than I thought. Given another 6 weeks, if you ignore the spinach not being the right plant, I would've had some good exhibits. Hopefully I've given someone else the confidence to think they can do better and give it a go next year, which is precisely the trap I fell into. 😂

Since then I've been trying to catch up at the allotment (still WIP), and adding some more houseplants to my collection. I managed to snag a free pond liner for the allotment so that's this years big project once we get to it - husband doesn't know yet but he'll be helping! Mum and I went to Gardener's World Live yesterday which is our 4th trip I think; we absolutely love it. I am planning to under plant my fruit trees at the allotment so got the herbs I'd been struggling to find locally, plus some extra plants for the front garden (I bought various single plants last year to try, this year I've bought a few more of the ones that worked to fill the gaps) and I think one back garden plant that I couldn't find locally either. We go on holiday tomorrow so given the heatwave I only bought things that would cope in their pots in the shade.

There have been a couple of substantial impulse purchases this month! I've been wanting a Google Pixel Tablet for over a year now, but the cost to buy new with the dock was about £500-600. I set up an alert for when CEX got them back into stock and paid £360 for a top graded one. Very pleased with it and in perfect time for our trip. Then yesterday there was a stall selling artwork and I got some beautiful prints for our bedroom, they were £110, but it'll probably cost more than that to get them framed! We are very much in the "know it when we see it" camp for artwork, so assuming it's not hundreds of pounds, I tend to buy it when I see it.

I finally set up the tree fern irrigation in our back garden. It's not all pinned down fully yet but we want to let it settle and then adjust. This is on a timer, running for a total of 7 minutes per day (early morning, mid morning and late evening). I'm also setting up irrigation at the allotment for the greenhouse; I'm partway through that and the solar-powered pump is hooked up to the water butt and primed, so I need to put the pipes in.

On that note, lots to do in not a huge amount of time, so I had best crack on!