Riding the wave

Keep_Buggering_On · 7 July at 3:27PM

Well that was a good couple of finds! Went into Asda at lunchtime and they had a lot of the gardening stuff down to half price or better- picked up a watering can for £1.24 and a pair of secateurs for £2.08. My existing watering can is a galvanised metal one I found under a bush when I was a kid and is 100 years old if its a day, unsurprisingly it leaks all over my feet so the new watering can is something of an upgrade! My existing secateurs have lost the spring between the arms so every time I use it, I have to manually open it between each cut so my nice new shiny ones will be much better!

Keep_Buggering_On · 10 July at 11:03AM

The end of another week and looking forward to the weekend now. I hope the weather cools a little, but stays dry as I have a long list of jobs I want to get done outside, but if its too hot I will have to retreat indoors. The front of my garden slopes up sharply to the road and where the flower bed hits this slope I am building a dry stone wall that I will back fill with soil to level off the slope and give me a raised bed. I have trawled the garden and found a lot of bits of sandstone and every time I go out around the village I am keeping my eyes open for small bits of stone dumped at the edges of the footpaths to help build it up. I have probably got it about half the height I want now (about 8” high so far), the next big issue is the soil to back fill it with, but there is a sloped area behind the office at the other end of the garden that needs to be levelled, so my plan is to strip off the brambles and weeds, then dig it out and use the stones for the wall and the soil to fill the flower bed. It’s a bit of a project, but hopefully will cost nothing more than my sweat and hard work! I have lived in this house for 17 years and I have never really done much with the garden until this year, but I am really starting to enjoy getting out and making progress, even if most of the time I haven’t a clue what I am doing.

It’s the kids last week at school next week and DD’s final week at primary school. So far she has a circus skills workshop, foam party and disco in the diary for next week- bit different from when I was a kid and someone’s mum organised a barbeque in their garden to mark the end of primary school and that was it! It will also be DD’s last week at Cubs as she turns 11 over the summer and she has decided she doesn't want to carry on to Scouts, so big changes afoot.

Not much to report on the money saving front, however I did get four massive share bags of Sweet Chilli crisps in the chuck out of B&Ms yesterday for 33p each- they are usually about £2 each in Asda. Me and OH often share a bag of crisps as a treat on a Saturday night, so they have gone in the cupboard and will be much appreciated over the coming weeks. I have also booked us a table at the lovely Italian restaurant in the village for September and arranged for a friend's eldest to come over and stay with the kids for the evening- we have been going out 20 years in September and married for 16 so we need to mark the occasion. Not money saving, but important! I look back at us when we were 21 and 22 and first going out, can't believe its been nearly half our lives now! I can't be that annoying to be with after all…

Keep_Buggering_On · 17 July at 11:11AM

DD’s last day at primary school today and I have the afternoon off work to go down to her leaver’s assembly. It feels a little strange as both the kids went to the school and its been part of our life for ten years now. Both kids are ready for their summer holidays now and hopefully the weather will be good for them so they can enjoy their break. DD finally got her SATS back yesterday and did better than we expected. The benchmark is 100 and she got 98 in two and 107 in the third, so although below average, for DD we felt this was a good result, she is not an academic and is dyslexic so although she tries really hard, she is more practically minded. She is also the youngest in her class by a long way as she is not even 11 until next month and some of the other children are a good 11 months older than her so we are proud of her achievements as they mean a lot for her and show the effort she put in. I think they pass the results on to high school, so hopefully that will allow them to give her the extra support if they feel she needs it.

My plan this weekend is clearing a huge pile of scrap wood dumped around the garden. One of our neighbours had a massive shed taken down and I claimed the wood so its currently dumped behind my office waiting to be cut up. I am feeling much happier about the fuel status now for the coming winter as I think I now have enough to last us through although much of it needs to be cut up. I also have seven bags of smokeless coal left in the bunker- I use a shovel a day to bed the fire in so that should take us through the winter months as well.

Had to do some rejigging of the meal plan for the coming week yesterday- I had got it all planned out then checked in the freezer and realised I had used up the chicken thighs I thought were in there and we were out of sausages, so had to come up with an alternative menu to make use of what we did have. OH doesn’t get paid until Wednesday so it’s a case of adapt, overcome, survive! We are certainly not going to starve as I have about three months of food in my store cupboards for emergencies and when the month is longer than the pay! OH laughs at me for having emergency loo roll in the shed, but a couple of times we have run out of the big packet with a week to go and the little packs of four rolls in my store have rolled us over until we can restock with the big one!