Gardening

Today has been a big gardening day for me. I am going away with work soon and I wanted to get as much done as I could before I left. Started out mowing all the lawns - very satisfying - and then I got down to making somewhere to get some veg in. I dug out the area around the new apple tree and the rhubarb, not necessarily the best place for veggies but this will be just for this year, plans for the gardens will mean this bed needed digging out anyway and the tree and the rhubarb are not going to get massive this year.

Now the problem with my garden is that, being built on a hill and near a quarry, it is full of rocks. Turning over a bed like I did this morning is back breaking work that requires hours of digging out rocks before you can progress very far. 3 hours on and I have all of them out (5 boxes full of rocks!), added in some compost and raked it all over. A job well done.

I have put in peas, onions and some new potatoes (nicola variety, which I have had before and which were delicious) It is not a particularly organised bed, I know where everything is, but it is not in neat little rows, again, that is a one year thing, I just wanted to get them in so that I can go away and leave them.

I also planted another blackcurrant in a pot this time, and some potatoes in potato bags, see how they do in there, my mum has had a lot of luck using them.

It is an absolute pleasure working outside in the garden and I could spend all day doing it (unlike my neighbours, who hate gardening so much that, at this moment they are having the entire thing decked, every last little square inch - not my kind of garden at all)

I have made a master long term plan in my own garden. At first, I wanted to give the back over to veggies, but I then realised how much I love beautiful ornamental plants as well. So I am going for a true cottage garden with a mixture of veg and ornamental, all growing in a planned haphazard way. I am going to put a couple of full size trellis up along the top of the slope at the far end of the garden which will be used for growing clematis, roses, etc and in front of that will be a patio area that will have a small table and some chairs. I decided to use the sloping part for raised beds, will be a lot of work to dig out, but will be worth it in the end I think to utilise the space. The other part of the slope will be used for fruit bushes as in the original idea. I will separate the flat garden from the sloped veg garden with the trellis and a hedge which will give me some much needed privacy from neighbours and then I will get more beds in where I can. I am lucky with a due South facing garden, so whatever I do, I never create much shade and it will always be lovely and sunny, weather allowing.
All this will take a long time to do, but I think it is best to have the plan as a starting point, then I won't make so many mistakes when I am deciding to put something in. As all of the work will be done by me, It shouldn't cost too much, which is good, as I need to put some money aside to replace the fence within the next 12 months.

I will try and scan in the plan some time and show you all.

Meanwhile, I will leave you with another couple of pictures of the puppies (see last post)

Puppies

This last week, I had the wonderful experience of being at the birth of 5 puppies. My friend has a cockapoo and she gave birth to 3 girls and two boy puppies. I missed the birth of the first 2, but arrived in time for the last 3. It was a privilege and a pleasure to be there for such an occasion. Talk about making me want a dog! I have not given in  yet though, I don't think it is fair until I stop going away with work so much. The moment I do, I will be getting a dog for sure.

5 minutes old

The snow is back

How crazy is this? I am snowed in again. last week was summer temperatures and now, I have slept through a snow storm and woken to a white world. OK, so I have enjoyed how pretty the snow is once this year, now, I have had enough. Today I was going to mow the grass!

Every little helps.

I think that most people who are careful with money and live a fairly frugal lifestyle are aware of how the big boy supermarkets manipulate their prices to fool the public into thinking they are getting a deal, but I have been reading just how low those depths go.
Last month asda had a deal on readybrek, 2 for £3. The actual price of readybrek was £1.50 but at the same time as putting on this offer asda increased the price of readybrek to £2.19. One of their many scams.
It seems the most recent practice is to increase the price and put an offer onto it, just like this, and then at the end of the offer 'roll back' the price to a more expensive one than the original. That way they are increasing the price of the item, but making it look like they have rolled it back.

In a difficult economic time like this, to me, this seems like a very shady practice. If they are putting the price up, just be honest about it and let the customer make an informed choice instead of fooling them into buying something so they think they are getting a deal.

I pick asda out as an example but we all know that Sainsburys and tesco etc do the exact same practice.
Another practice is to subtly change the amount of contents the product holds. Recently red wine vinegar went down in price, but now instead of getting 500ml you get 350 ml, making the over all price much higher.
Have any of you noticed that 4 cans of branded tuna is regularly £6 now, which is outrageous, so people automatically reach for the own brand label which retail at about the £3 something mark. Forgive me if I am mistaken, but didn't branded tuna used to retail at that price? Another ploy to make you buy their own brand at an inflated price.

I do most of my shopping in Aldi or Lidl nowadays, and in a local butchers. I would shop more in local shops, but thanks to the big boys, there is not even a fruit and veg shop anywhere in my town.
How lovely it was to go to Bury market this weekend and talk to market stall owners who could tell you where produce had come from and give good prices.

Lining the pockets of the main supermarkets is not what I want to do with my money. The slogan Every Little Helps should read Every Profit Helps.

Be extraordinary

My mum is afraid that I am missing out on life by saving money and paying towards a future with no mortgage and no debts. She things that I should have some fun sometimes. It got me thinking about how the world perceives money savers. It is no surprise that the national average debt is somewhere between 4 and 6 thousand per person, excluding mortgages and student loans when the attitude of exceptionally sane people like my mother still equates fun with spending money. I have had the most wonderful, enjoyable and yes, fun, week with my friend and the sum total we spent was some petrol, but not much as I only did about 20 miles in the whole week and £1 in parking. Food, except for a cream tea, was eaten at home and cooked in the kitchen, as it normally would be for me. Because I am a good cook, restaurants are often a disappointment. How often do you find when you are paying a restaurant bill, that you start thinking about how much that would have cost if you had made it yourself and how much better you could do it. Could I have had more fun by spending large amounts of money? I doubt it, because the fantastic company of a really good friend, the wonderful English countryside and the joy of fresh air was something that can't be beaten.

I have, in the past, been on dating websites - they have never lasted long because in the end, that is not how I would like to meet someone and there is something a little sordid about many of them. But one thing that I notice is that in the list of hobbies, one of them that often comes up as a choice is 'shopping'. Since when did spending money become a hobby? How did materialism really take over peoples lives so much that shopping became a solution for having fun?

I was paid a huge compliment a few years ago by a colleague of mine. She said that she had always respected me so much, because I was never drawn in by the crowd, never followed what everyone else did and never minded being different. That I didn't shout about it, I didn't preach about my life, I just led it in a different way. It is something I am proud of.

One of my favourite films is 'Dead Poets Society' and one of the phrases that I have always loved in that film is when Robin Williams takes the boys out into the corridor to look at the old photos of past school boys and quotes the poem 'Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may'. He reminds the boys to 'be extraordinary'. Nowhere does he say,' and remember to have fun and spend lots of money'. Just live your life differently than the crowd.

I am lucky, because I have seen the world through my job and travelled extensively with it, so spending money on holidays has never been important. Yet of the three big holidays I have had, the best by far was also the cheapest - hiring a little cottage in Scotland, for very little money. Beat going to the caribbean, or, horror of horrors, the trip to Egypt I had, which cost me an arm and a leg. It is so often about the company, and not about the money spent.

Most people think that if they have not something new and shiny to show for their lives, for their money, then they have somehow failed and sometimes I think people spend so that they can show other people what they have. Possessions have become more important than what is going on inside. They think that others judge them on what fashion they are wearing more than what are their values and morals. Sadly, this is probably true. When the country was struck by horrible looting last summer it wasn't a stand of people trying to fight for what they believed in, but the dregs of society trying to get more possessions for free.

A large part of the blame for all of this is down to people trying to emulate what others have. Following a celebrity culture that shows that you can have what you want and that you deserve it. It is down to media and reality tv making the very worst kind of people into stars which the young look up to and wish they had the same things, when wise people such as frugal Queen and mean queen should be the real stars. Instead, people who have good values are made out to be a bit eccentric on shows such as Superscrimpers.
How wonderful would the world be if people started saying NO and turning away from celebrity culture, if people started to be extraordinary in a different way.

TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME.

by Robert Herrick

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,	5
The higher he 's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he 's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;	10
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,	15
You may for ever tarry.

Foraging

Another lovely day yesterday before my friend left back to the States. Hopefully not another 9 years before we see each other again!
The plan yesterday was to climb the hill that I can see from my window. It started out a little frustrating, because, armed with my OS map, we set off on the path that was shown, but time after time we were thwarted by lack of signs, lack of path and too many brick walls that it was impossible to get over. Finally, after climbing over a fallen down dry stone wall from the cemetery, we found ourselves on one of the paths shown - well it was all worth it. Once we were beyond the houses and farms we found ourselves in open moorland, hills and rivers with breathtaking beauty and unbelievable views. Our plan was to walk to Watergrove Reservoir and after 2 and a half hours of wrong turns we got there, after a break dipping our tired feet in a beautiful river. Watergrove reservoir is really lovely, with small beaches and little groves of trees all around it. It took us 2 and a half hours to get there, but only 1 and a half hours to get back, once we knew where we were going - I've stored the route away in my head for the future. On the way home, we met a charming old couple who had lived here in Whitworth all their lives and knew the hills like the back of their hands and were able to give us a great route back that comes out really near my home. They also told us an interesting tale of how during the 2nd World War, the army had used two old ruined farms as target practice and how, as a boy, he had dug around the ruins and found all the old shells, using them to add weight to his home made bows and arrows. He pointed out so many different walks and routes in the area to us that my head was spinning and I was unable to remember most of them.

While we were out, I came across the tell tale smell of wild garlic and there was acres of it. We gathered a few handfuls to bring back for the evening.
We decided to make a sort of bacon pasta carbonara using the wild garlic and some pink peppercorns that I had picked and dried when I was working in the South of France last year and it was really lovely. The wild garlic gives such a wonderful and subtle flavour offset by the sharp taste of the peppercorns. A meal to be proud of and one made all the nicer by the foraged ingredients, the good company, the fresh air of the day and our sun-pink and happy faces!

Seeing my new area through another's eyes.

I feel like I have been absent for ages! I have been up since 5 this morning and have caught up on all your lovely blogs which was a nice early morning treat. I have had an old friend staying with me this week, one who I have not seen in 9 years because she lives in New York and it has been such a lovely time. I have not been working at all (because my departure back to London for a couple of months work is on 9th April)  and the weather, as you all know, has been absolutely glorious.
It has been a wonderful opportunity to explore my new area with someone who knows it even less that I do and it has been enormous fun.
On Tuesday we took a walk down Healey Dell, which is a nature reserve, local to me and spent a lovely morning following the river, looking for kingfishers (we found none), wagtails (we found one) and trying to spot fairies in the faries chapel (no luck there either). In the afternoon we wandered over the hill behind my house and to the reservoir.
Yesterday we went to Gawthorpe Hall, near Burnley which was such a beautiful building. Sadly it doesn't open to the public until this coming weekend, but people are free to wander through the grounds. We then had a cream tea in the tea rooms - essential for such a visit I think.

Gawthorpe Hall

We rounded off the trip with a drive to the incredibly pretty village of Barley, which nestles under the shadow of Pendle Hill, famed for its connection with the Lancashire witches. What a lovely village, highly recommended if you find yourself in the area. We paid our pound parking (which delighted us by being charged on the honour system) and walked to the base of Pendle Hill. Neither of us had quite enough energy or the correct gear to climb the hill, but I would love to go back one day and do it.

Pendle Hill

Today we are going to try and climb over the hills that separate my little town of Whitworth with Hollingworth Lake. It may to too far a walk, but  we will see how far we get. It starts with climbing the hill that I have been looking at from my living room window for the last 2 months and I have been dying to know what is on the other side!

In other news, my compost bin has arrived and last night I put in my very first load of compostable kitchen waste. It may not seem very exciting to most people, but to me it was a real event, something that reinforces a connection to the garden cycle and it felt quite significant.

Welcome to my new followers, there seem to have been quite a lot of you recently! Sorry that I have posted little of late. It is always nice to here from you, so please comment and introduce yourself, or just say hello, if you feel like it. We are a very friendly community!