Teetering on the brink

Sun_Addict

Sorry to hear you didn’t get the job but great news about your DD. Swings and roundabouts, such is life. 

Cherryfudge

That's brilliant about your daughter's courses, well done to her and her backing team (you). It's also somewhat comforting to know what tough opposition you were up against for your interview - and now those those are out of the away, there's more room for you next time. Sometimes there's virtually nothing to choose between individuals and it comes down to how well their previous experience fits with the job in question.

And what a great set of subjects your daughter has - I'd have loved those, with the exception of the Maths.  

northAthenian

Fabby news for DD2, well done BOTH of you.i'll bet you both need a long sleeps what a lot of extra stressors this week had!

NeverendingDMP

Excellent news for DD, sorry you didn't get the news you had hoped for, Have a good weekend 

biggerpickle

@EatingBeans rubbish news about the job and how much that would have helped the debt monster but very well done to DD2 for overcoming the gcse hurdle and onto her course 

EatingBeans

So, rather than stress over the exam that I probably should be doing today, I thought I would start my pottering in the garden and try to forget the stress of the past week. 

I started with a litter pick - the dogs create so much rubbish in the form of sticks and wrappers they have stolen etc., that it can begin to look like I have emptied my bin in the garden if I am not careful. Rubbish collected, I moved on to pruning my Flamingo Willow tree which seems to have gone a bit wild this year. It is a very pretty small tree which I picked up as an almost dead stick a few years back from Homebase. As is the case for many of the plants in my garden, dd2 and I had gone to the diy store for something completely unrelated (paint for the living room in this case), and dd2 had spotted something she really liked that was heavily discounted (£2.50 if i recall correctly), so I thought what the hell, it will make her happy and bought it with no plan about what I would do with it. I’ll be honest, it sat in its tiny original pot for about 12months (it kept blowing over in the wind it was such a small pot), but since it continued to survive even with zero care, I eventually potted it on and eventually it went in the ground near the pond. I really wasn’t a huge fan of it to start with as it just looked like random sticks with a few pastel pink leaves on the end (no idea what dd2 saw in it) but it was dd2’s so I couldn’t chuck it away without her noticing, especially if it was still alive. Now though! Wow. It is quite a tree. It was grafted as a standard and I thought the ‘ball’ on the top would stay pretty small but not so! It’s about 5ft wide/high and still growing in all directions so it needed a good trim back to even be able to see the pond again. Throught the year the leaves change from pastel pink to mottled green/white so now it has filled in it actually looks very pretty. Not bad for £2.50 plus lots of neglect! 🤣

Just the pruning and a bit of watering about did me in, but I was determined to make progress on at least a bit of the ‘fence’ too, so I planted the privet I had been growing in the trough and added a bit of bamboo in that tiny gap I was talking about before. I had no idea just how many runners the donor bamboo had already created until I got down to see if I could take a cutting - for a clumping bamboo that has only been in the ground two years it turns out it was exceptionally keen on spreading and I was spoilt for choice over which bit to take! 😱 I fear I may have made a rod for my own back by planting it elsewhere but at least it should grow quickly and stop little dog from getting to the fence in that spot at least. 🙂

I recon about 3/4’s of the fence line is now sufficiently dog proof. There are things in front of the remaining areas to stop little dog but they are temporary measures and sometimes she likes to use the pots as a climbing frame, so still more work to do. Not today though. All the exercise has about done me in. Time to sit and just relax for a bit and then try to find something low cost to eat. 🙂 I daren’t even look at my bank balance now I know the promotion is off the table. I REALLY could have done with it about now. 😕

satchmo1

Maybe you could use the pots you've emptied recently and pot up plant cuttings and sell them? 

Cherryfudge

That's a great idea of @satchmo1's. You might be able to start off some willow cuttings too, though it's late in the season so perhaps in spring...

I had to look up Flamingo Willow. Isn't it pretty!

Re the low cost to eat - what do you like? What sort of things do you default to? I am quite a fan of fish finger sandwiches at the moment, but mostly eat vegetarian. There is a very, very old bunch of threads which I've bookmarked somewhere which make very entertaining reading (saves on library fines) and have some carefully structured recipes that cost very little but are nutritionally sound. I'll see if I can send you a link.

Here's one: Old Style vs the USDA head-to-head challenge... — MoneySavingExpert Forum

and this: 50p a day til Christmas - healthily?! Weezl's next challenge... — MoneySavingExpert Forum

and a later one: Weezl's phase 1- recipe testing and frugalisation- come one, come all! — MoneySavingExpert Forum

EatingBeans

Great idea @satchmo1 I love the idea of selling cuttings. This is something I have toyed with doing in the past as I used to love pottering in my greenhouse, but sadly I now no longer have a greenhouse and I have two puppies who kill more seedlings than survive! Once things are in big pots they tend to be fairly safe but small pots tend to be viewed as toys and they get launched, pounced on then shredded. 🤦‍♀️ They will grow out of it I am sure but for now all sowing of seeds/cuttings in small pots has been put on hold. 😞 Something for the future though. 👍

EatingBeans

And thanks for the links @Cherryfudge ! I don’t have time to read them all tonight but I had a quick look and can see there is a wealth of ideas - I will definitely be coming back to them! 

It is funny you should say about fish finger sandwiches as I was looking through my freezer for something for dinner and my two options were fish finger sandwiches or fish, chips and beans. We went for the latter as I was starving and it felt more like a dinner but I do love a fish finger sandwich! 😋