Friday job - weeding the garden.

Thanks to Bridget at Malbridge house who said yesterday that perhaps I would wake up today and find it was summer and I did!
It actually took a couple of hours for the sun to work it's way through the clouds but since then its been 14 degrees warmer than yesterday and I'm back in shorts - not a pretty sight.
When Him Outside went to hospital a couple of weeks back for tests, I went too, just in case the nasty stomach camera thing made him feel ill. But we decided it was a waste of good weather for me to go with him today as he was 'just' going to the chest pain clinic for ECG on a treadmill  to confirm the previous diagnosis of Angina and to find out what they would do next.
So I got busy outside and tackled a corner of the garden that I haven't took photo's of before, as it was a mess. It was over-run with Tansy, which has never been planted in this area so came in by seeding from another bit of garden about 8 yards away. WARNING if you ever fancy planting a herb garden with unusual herbs, DO NOT plant Tansy! Unless you would like lots of tansy all over the place and as it smells horrible why would you? The problem is that it spreads by running roots so even though I've pulled up every bit I could see, I probably can't get rid of it except by digging up the whole bed.

The bottom photo is a close up of tansy where it is growing at the bottom of a trellis arch and that is my next place to tidy up.

Him Outside arrived back from Ipswich Hospital mid afternoon with a more or less definite diagnosis of angina and clutching a bundle of boxes of tablets which he will now have to take daily. This is such a weird thing as when I started this blog just a couple of months ago the only thing wrong with him was a dodgy knee that would ache when rain was approaching. Now he gets chest pains when doing anything involving shoveling or lifting heavy things and we may have to change a lot of things that we do here.With the thought now in the back of our minds that we might not be able to stay and work a 5 acre smallholding for quite as long as we had planned. He will be back to hospital for more tests within 8 weeks.
The flowers on the quince tree have now opened, they are so pretty. How did I manage to take a photo without getting a flower in the middle of the picture? what a twit! Put glasses on next time!

I know that I need my glasses on for lots more things now as this is the first year that I've needed them  to check the gooseberry bushes for the tell tale signs of sawfly caterpillar.
Seems old age is creeping up on both of us!

This weather is getting me down!

Apparently it's official. The coldest spring since 1963 or somewhere back then when I was young and didn't notice the weather. Now I do notice and I'm fed up with it and I feel grotty and I'm going to bed!

Tuna tales on a grumpy day

Before I start the tuna tale let me just say thank you to Karen at Chelmarsh Chunterings and Bridget at Malbridge House for comments yesterday. After reading other blogs and finding that some people get nasty comments and other bloggers get weird requests (like Ilona who got a request from someone offering to write a 'guest' blog for her?) I think I'm lucky to get nice comments.

My tuna tale is me remembering when a tin of value tuna chunks was about 35p and big tins of salmon were only £1. Not that long ago either. Now a tin of value tuna is 65p and Salmon is priced out of reach. Anyway, I decided that tuna fishcakes would be OK for dinner tonight so pulled two different coloured tins out of the cupboard and was just about to put my glasses on to see  what they were and why they were different, when the phone rang. It was a call for Him Outside and as I had already forgotten to pass on a message from this caller yesterday (whoops!) I thought I had better go straight out, find Him Outside and get him in to reply to caller straight away. Of course by the time I had put on coat- I'm FED UP with this cold drizzle today- walked right up past the workshop, found Him Outside,  walked back down again, taken off coat and got back into kitchen, I had forgotten about reading tins and just opened the first one. Only to find it wasn't chunks but something called tuna flakes which actually just seemed like liquidized tuna and absolutely NO GOOD for making fish cakes. Which meant I then had to open the other tin,which was chunks and could be drained properly. All of which results in us having tuna sandwich with salad for lunch and we will do tomorrow as well ,plus having the fishcakes for tonight. So we will quite be fed up with tuna I think. The so-called tuna flakes came from Aldi and must have been cheaper than chunks and you can easily see why, as there is almost no tuna in the can amongst all the liquid.
So fishcakes were made, dipped in egg and rolled in home made breadcrumbs. ( I buy the cheapest brown loaf I can find, turn it into crumbs, dry on trays in oven and tip into box to store in freezer. It makes loads and they keep for ages).
And before cooking they look like this:-

 And now I shall say Yah Boo Sucks to the horrible grey weather and finish my book. Hopefully by tomorrow I shall be rid of the grumpyness that has sat on me all day today!

Nothing happened today!

Despite thinking it was Monday all day because I was doing Mondays jobs it has been a normal sort of day. Him Outside went off early to do odd jobs for one of his customers, while I stayed at home and made bread, baked some chocolate cakes to put in the freezer, gave the kitchen worktops a good scrub, did some hoovering,wrote lists for shopping, meals and jobs that need doing during the week and tackled the ironing.
We still have a family group with tent and caravan on the campsite and just 2 guys who are still working at the Sizewell Power Station. The other blokes are working elsewhere now although one or two might be back later in the summer.
The weather has been a bit grey and I've done nothing outside.
In fact there is really nothing  to write about!
Perhaps tomorrow will be more interesting.

On a Bank Holiday Monday Soapbox

I've just read something on a blog that made me raise my eyebrows. My idea of being frugal has always been to use my time to do things that other people pay for.  So the thought of giving away £6  which could have been saved  by spending about 15 minutes sitting at a table puzzles me. If anyone else is puzzled by this do let me know!
Another thing that  mystifies me is why people save money in tins or something similar. Most of our income arrives in cash - not many people pay for a dozen eggs by writing a cheque or organising a bank transfer! So I could save it all in little tins all around the house if I wanted to. But it would earn me NOTHING and would be risky. Instead of this we both have an ISA. A well known high street bank has an instant access ISA where you can put any odd bits of cash in, it pays interest monthly so that every month the interest earns more interest, and you don't pay tax on an ISA either. A win win situation.
 I know which way of saving I would always choose.
Well, each to his own I think the saying is!

I will get down off my soapbox and get back to normal. Today has been quite restful, not quite as much sitting around as planned as him outside saw next weeks depressing weather forecast and kept thinking of things that needed doing while the weather was fine, and I decided to tidy up a small bit of garden that was full of lemon balm. Before we did these jobs ( and the normal campsite cleaning and egg collecting) we nipped up the road to the car boot sale as usual. We lead SUCH eventful lives that car boot sales and local shopping are often the only times I go out!

Today's car boot was huge - by local standards - probably about 150+ boots we estimated. And at last I found someone selling craft stuff, (this time mostly crafting papers), which I search for all summer ready for winter card making. For £3.50 I got all this lot, which includes a big pack of oriental papers, peel offs, charms, and toppers.

Sorry about the fuzzy picture, I really should put my glasses on so I can see what I'm doing!

I also found 4 small Lavender plants for 60p each. I already have several lavenders in the garden and in pots, so these will be grown on, potted up and sold next year for £1.50! I know this is only a tiny profit but every little helps. One of the stalls at the car boot had some local  strawberries and they looked so delicious we treated ourselves to a punnet. These must have been grown in a greenhouse or tunnel as our strawberries here have only just produced flowers. I can confirm they were delicious, definitely not flown in from foreign climes.

We were able to spend some time with out feet up and I'm now reading the second book in the Cazelet series by Elizabeth Jane Howard that I  mentioned a week or so back. I decided not to read one straight after the other and have got through two modern crime books in between.

 Just remembered the French Open tennis and turned on to see The lovely Rafa winning his first round match.

I'm having a night off cooking this evening so we will probably just have scrambled eggs. We eat all the odd shaped eggs that can't be sold, but they taste just as good!

Back tomorrow with more riveting details of our eggsiting adventures here!

Thank goodness for a bit of warmth -AT LAST

Before I forget ( which I often do) I must say welcome to new visitors who have left comments and new followers who have added themselves to the pictures on the right. I hope you enjoy this simple blog about our  life here on the smallholding where we try to live frugally and lightly on the planet.

It's been a lovely sunny day here  on the edge of Suffolk, and at last there seemed to be a bit of warmth, to cheer everyone up. We zoomed out early to  two local  small car boot sales. Him Outside found a trailer light-board for £5, which is a bargain apparently. I thought we had at least one or two already but  another was required in case one of the others got damaged.
I found a couple more things which will be Christmas presents. That means I have almost finished my Christmas shopping! ( Except for the 3 children and their partners who will be asked what they would like much later in the year). I also found someone selling brand new tea-towels for 20p each. I'm  glad that so many people now have dishwashers as that means that those of us who don't can buy tea- towels so cheaply. I usually stock up during the car boot season if possible so that I can turn some of my old ones into rags. My other £1 spend was on 4 pairs of brand new cotton knickers! Very useful, and 25p each must be good value.
We did  a bit more in the garden after our coffee break and got some leeks planted out and the new flower border hoed again.  I decided on this flower border after we took down some huge leylandii a few years ago and replaced them with a fence all along the front. So I sent for some cheap perennials to fill it up. They are growing- but VERY slowly which means there are lots of spaces in-between where weeds soon pop up. I now remember why I prefer a shrub Border!
Then we spent a few hours in the conservatory with all doors open.He listened to cricket on the radio and dozed and |I started a new book. I'm looking forward to watching some of the French Open tennis which I've just discovered is on TV all through the week. Wimbledon fortnight is my favourite time of the year and that's not far away either.
Here is another colourful garden photo. 3 shrubs and 2 apricot trees which have only ever fruited once. Before we had the new kitchen extension I could see these from the old kitchen window.

But now this shed and greenhouse need moving to give me back my view of the shrubs above.

Busy, Busy, Busy.

Phew! I'm kn******d. After so many days of wet and cold we needed to get a lot done outside today. We started before 8.30am, stopped for coffee at 9.30 and again at 11! We were taking things steady because Him Outside got some chest pains and breathlessness, and after reading more info about angina yesterday evening, we reckon that will be the definite diagnosis when he goes to the chest pain clinic. We have no idea what that will mean for our life here on the smallholding. There might be some things we will no longer be able to do, so slow and steady will be the plan from now on and no heavy lifting and lots of rests between jobs.
First job was to plant out four dozen hardy winter cabbage plants.Two different sorts that I have grown from seed. Then I potted up the late-sown tomato plants into larger pots, they will go out into the polytunnel in a couple of weeks and hopefully will give us some late tomatoes when the others have finished. We had 4 courgette plants still in the greenhouse and used 2 to replace the ones lost in the strong winds a couple of weeks ago, the other two have been squeezed into a poly tunnel. We then put straw around the strawberries and put in the hoops and netting over them. Next job was putting the last of the climbing French beans into a pot to go with the other 6 pots already planted.  Then we put a strip of plastic down each side of the summer raspberries, this is to stop the grass creeping in when we cover them with netting in a few weeks time. I put the nasturtium plants into bigger pots ready to go outside in a few days. In the fruit cage I used the secateurs to take the tops off the late summer raspberries as they were poking out of the top. Finally we pulled up the cabbage stalks and Him Outside used the rotovator to prepare  the bed that will be for leeks later. Of course there were all the normal campsite and egg collecting jobs to be done too.
That was before  lunch!
 After a long  lunch hour Him Outside took the strimmer up the road to the second home he now looks after and did a bit more tidying and grass cutting. I finally finished the job of tidying all the pots of herbs and tree seedlings  and got the small mower out to cut a couple of bits of grass that can't be done with the ride-on.
Finally I thought I would take a few close-up photos of  things in the garden.
These pretty little flowers, just about to open are on the quince tree. 

 Finally opening AT LAST are the flowers on our Horse Chestnut.  Pink flowers are more unusual than the white flowered Chestnuts.

 The rainfall over the last few days has been really good for the gooseberries, a bit of sunshine and warmth over the next few weeks and we will be soon be picking and selling and getting scratched to bits!

Now we can have a restful evening and a quiet Bank Holiday  Sunday and Monday, with a couple of  local car boot sales and some reading. That's the sort of Bank Holiday we like, avoiding the crowds!