dEAr diary – Page 51 – where the journey takes me 2

April 10, 2019

dEAr diary ~ a day of ideas

Hello there – it seems a while since I was here in my little space and I can’t even remember now where I have got to so apologies if what I say here has already been said once.

You might have guessed I have been busy – what’s new!

We had a weekend at home and to ourselves – if I remember we were both in the garden and I also did a few more cards – but more about that later.

This week began with our usual shopping trip on Monday, first into town for a few bits and pieces and then round to the big Sainsbury’s on the ring road for the weekly food shopping. I say bits and pieces which they were individually but the cost collectively was surprisingly a bit much for one day.

I went to Primark first to look at jackets. I have a brilliant hooded jacket I bought from Primark for £6 in 2004 when we bought the cottage. It is so useful in the garden in Scotland – an all-weather coat – it has a light waterproof nylon fabric on the outside, so no bits of vegetation or the like sticks to me, with a warm fleece lining and the hood is small so doesn’t blow off with the first puff of wind – absolutely necessary when you live by the sea. It is still going strong after many washes.

The reason I want to find a similar jacket is because I have recently taken to bringing it back down home with me to wear in the garden here but I know the day will come when I will forget to pack it when we go up to the cottage and so I thought it would be a good item to duplicate. I looked in the ladies section of Primark but their lightweight duvet style jackets have no hoods and are very fitted; then just as we were leaving I noticed the men’s display ah ha …idea….I went to the men’s section and they had a perfect one with a hood and just a little bit more roomy which is much better for gardening. I came away with the extra small but I will need to go back and change it for the small size for a little bit more ease so I can wear a thick jumper underneath should I need to! Cost – a cosy £15

Then across to Wilkos to look in the gardening section for Tomato food to feed both the bulbs and the tomatoes (when I get them sown) – it was much cheaper here than anywhere else at £3.25. On the way I noticed (as you do) a white Dicentra for £2 hung in the packaged bulbs display – I was tempted as I have wanted one for the garden at home for a long time but in the garden centre the plants are £10 which I thought a bit steep. I bought one and have planted it in the garden but I am doubtful about it growing as it just looked like a bag full of dry peat but I thought for the price I would give it a go – I also treated myself to a white indoor plant pot for £2.Before leaving the store I had a rummage in the crafts section as they have a lovely range of inexpensive Easter crafts to keep the kids busy. I came across these garden signs for £2 which will be useful for the Easter egg hunt we intend to do for the children at the party on Easter Sunday, weather permitting of course and, for Libbie, a sew your own felt chicken Easter basket £1.50.

I then popped into the Works as I had a £0.50p voucher and wanted to buy some polystyrene eggs – ten for £0.50p with the voucher – I have an idea to cover them in printed tissue papers for Easter decorations for the party. It goes against the grain to buy polystyrene but I will be keeping them for a long time to reuse – had I got more time I would have done some hand painted real eggs – but that will be another year. I also bought a pack of stronger dowels to attach the garden signs to for £1. The bamboo basket in the photo above was a great find in Sainsbury’s for £2.50.

The final stop was one of our local independent whole food / health shops – I often alternate between the two as I like them both and would hate to see either of them close down. I prefer them to Holland and Barret as they sell more organic foods and are often cheaper. Here I bought Almond oil which I use as a face cleanser and for massage, my high dose Solgar Vitamin D capsules, some Omega 3 oils and two packs of Kalo tomato stock cubes for the soup and to add flavour to rice – a grand ‘sit down’ total of £39.03.

The food shopping was pretty normal and came in a bit cheaper than usual at £52.38 this included a few extra salad bits and some nice breads for the lunch I prepared today for my sister and brother-in-law when they called in on their way up north.

I made sure to carefully whiz past the clothes and magazines – but I did buy these.I bought myself one for my desk at the beginning of the year and I love it (see here). Now you might be wondering what I would want with five more calendars that are all for this year especially now we are in April…..well I had another idea ( I think they must have put something in the water recently!!)…. Sainsbury’s had reduced them down to £2.10 and the metal stands which are gold or black are very sturdy and allow you to remove each calendar page by unscrewing the little nuts – my idea is to keep the stands and attach my own version of next years calendars using photos DH and I take throughout the year and give them as presents to my friends at Christmas.

It could well be a gift that keeps on giving because you can use the stands over and over again so in following years I could keep giving a new set of calendar pages to my friends to fix onto their stands. Each year I might choose photos of a different theme such as seaside, towns, gardens etc.

Did I mention last week I bought this cardboard Peter Rabbit egg from an old-fashioned sweet shop in Saltburn. I then bought a £1 Cadbury’s chocolate Easter egg and my idea is to remove the wrapper and decorate with little iced flowers and Libbies name to put inside. If the chocolate egg is in two halves then I will put some of those tiny shell coated eggs inside.So as you can see I am full of ideas – oh and they don’t stop there – oh no – nothing that simple – somehow I am now doing the 40th birthday cake for my SIL’s (son in-law) party on Easter Sunday …..mmmm…how did that happen…..retirement – exactly what is that??

A day of dazzling ideas and bargain buys. x

Before I go welcome to my new followers. I will be back with more on my craft cards, the March Tally, the cottage update and a host of other things.

March 27, 2019March 28, 2019

dEAr diary ~ home again, home again

…but not for long….

Back at home now – it was quite a long day yesterday; there are always little bits to take care of in the garden before leaving, watering in the plants I have moved and putting chicken wire around the emerging ones to ‘bunny’ proof them. Then I pack and clean the caravan. By the time we are on the road I am feeling rather shattered sometimes, but it was a good journey, not too much traffic and no motorway closures.

Today I was up and showered, finished the unpacking and then took time to catch up with the post, the messages and life at home in general. I always clean the house before we go so it is nice to walk into when we arrive home so no housework needed today. Once everything was unpacked I then had to repack for our trip up to North Yorkshire tomorrow to stay with my younger daughter, Libbie and Sweetie for a couple of days.

In the afternoon we had to collect a parcel, return some library books and go to Sainsbury’s to buy some fresh vegetables, milk and yoghurt. I have a Quiche to make to take with us tomorrow for our evening meal at our daughters. Whilst in Sainsbury’s I bought my mum, who we will visit on Saturday, a lovely indoor basket of plants for Mother’s Day. So once the car is repacked we will be all set to go again.

I am not sure if I will manage a post in the next few days but I will as soon as possible. I am looking forward to looking after Sweetie for the day on Friday; Libbie (Little L) will be at school and their mum will be having her dental work done. Ouch!

A day of unpacking and unwinding, repacking and rewinding. x

March 25, 2019

dEAr diary ~ signs of new growth

Signs of new growth everywhere – Spring is well underway now.

Today at last was bonfire day, calm and sunny. We couldn’t light it yesterday because as soon as the caravaners had gone home and it was safe to start the fire the weather turned and the wind was far too strong.

Once lit we burned the box full of old file papers from home to save having to shred it all and then I had to run round pruning everything in sight, that can be pruned at this time of year, to get it all on the bonfire before the fire went out. I do like to wait until I can see some nice new buds appearing so I have something to cut down to – I am always nervous about pruning too hard lest I kill the plant altogether but most of the shrubs had plenty of strong healthy buds. As usual I did not manage to get all the pruning done – we have far too many shrubs and so the rest will have to wait for another visit if it is not too late in the season.

I did give our new loppers a good testing though and my arms a serious workout. I now have serious aches and pains too and extreme muscle fatigue and can hardly lift them to drink my cocoa tonight – but it did get me out of doing the washing up.

Hope they recover for the morning we have packing and cleaning to do.

After the mammoth pruning session I attempted to weed the stream bank border that is full of …you guessed it campion. Such lovely wild flowers but a border full of campion is a campion too far. Hidden amongst the campion I came across some more of those annoying wild garlic plants posing as bluebells, the leaves are similar, but their days are numbered as I have now become an expert at differentiating between them.

I managed to uncover the two Hydrangeas and Geraniums that I knew were somewhere in there and barrowed away 4 bags of weeds which will go to the landfill site on our next visit. So by the end of today I have part cleared all of our borders but actually finished none…oh well tomorrow is another day and the weeds will still be there on our next visit.

DH has done better and has completed the ditch clearing and the water has drained away so quickly that in an instant the muddy puddle where the pond had overflowed is now completely dry again. I can’t say the Primula are happy about that though as they were enjoying being waterlogged.

Tomorrow before we go home we need to cut some chicken wire to put around some of the more attractive plants (attractive to bunnies that is). They seem to love nibbling the young new shoots of my Delphinium and Dicentra and chicken wire is the only way to stop them.

I didn’t even stop today to take photos – hopefully I will tomorrow when I try to get some pictures of the inside of the cottage to do my long overdue update.

A day painstakingly pruning – producing positive results. x

Thank you for all the lovely comments about my cards – there really was not much effort to it but I enjoyed making them and using up some of the craft mountain I have accumulated – and will enjoy the savings I make too.

Welcome to my new followers – I hope you enjoy the journey.

March 23, 2019March 23, 2019

dEAr diary ~ a simple life for me

If you want to live more simply then try living in a caravan and you will undoubtedly satisfy that desire.

There is no room for any extras on board – only the basics.

Clutter is not a word that I would recognise living here as there is none – everything in the caravan is a considered item and has to have a home otherwise you would soon find yourself falling over things. The cupboards are few and none too generous in size so sometimes you have to be very creative with the space.

We have just enough dishes to make and eat a meal, nothing to bake with but then that must be healthier, although I did bring an apple cake with us, we just eat fruit or nuts, oat cakes, crackers. No puddings either but we have the occasional ice cream treat.

We have only a minimum of bedding and towels – one of each in use and one spare, just enough clothes for gardening and trips to town and a few necessities like toiletries and cleaners. We do have a small Dyson, a small bucket and a tiny hand brush and pan…that just about sums up the cleaning aids.

We eat very simple food as we have no electrical equipment like a blender or food processor. Our pans consist of a large 3 tier steamer, a milk pan, a medium pan with a lid and a frying pan with a lid. We also have a colander and I might consider buying a lettuce spinner for the summer as my one luxury.

Above the fire-place there are three shelves for decoration and display. I display only a few decorative items on here – a glass vase with a collection of tiny seashells inside, an empty vase for when I pick a few flowers, a little bowl full of dried rose petals from the garden, a lino cut picture of some geese by a local artist (our only picture) and a tiny set of wooden houses. The other items come under the useful rather than decorative category – a small china mug, a water jug, some heavy stemmed wine glasses that we use for most cold drinks and a clock with a lovely soothing tick.

We keep a small selection of books mostly gardening books for information and ideas and a novel or two. I also keep a box with a few stationary items – stapler, sellotape, scissors and the like, some coloured pencils and a notepad. We have a folder for instruction manuals and another for the few bills we have, water, electricity, council tax and that is our filing system. At home we have a large filing drawer with the archived papers in the loft.

Of course there is no loft here – instead there is a little storage space under the beds but they are empty – we have no need of anything to store – we use everything we have here. I don’t even keep any spare bedding for the 2nd bedroom – I am not expecting anyone to stay. I can look at something and think – yes I have used that in the last couple of days and it is a good feeling. If I were a nomad and had to pack all this stuff up to move on I daresay we would have even less.

For entertainment we play cards, read, write blog posts, of course, or listen to the radio. We have no television nor want one and at one time we had no internet connection so only brought the lap top with us if we just needed to access our documents and didn’t need to access the internet – now I can attend to my blog while I am here but that is all I do.

The mobile signal is quite pathetic at times so no-one tries to contact us and we rarely phone anyone other than my mum to check on her and my daughters just to let them know we are still alive.

Being so disconnected from the world might not suit everyone but I love our little retreat here – I could easily live here full-time but on the other hand I do not want to miss our new grandchildren growing up.

It is a dilemma not easily solved.

Today was another sunny day in the garden, slightly cooler but pleasant. I have been on weed patrol again digging over boarders and filling in the rabbit holes where they have scratched the surface to get at the plant roots. I will have to get more chicken wire to protect my young plants. Funny they don’t like the campion – there is plenty of it.

DH did a bit more of the ditch – here he is with his shovel and barrow (he is a bit blog shy – so only half of him).Hopefully it will stop the pond overflowing onto the path, though the primulas quite like the water.……. And then he shimmied up the old apple tree to lop the top off. All our best apples grow at the top. It is a half standard tree that was planted by the previous owners and was left to grow unchecked so it is a bit of a beanstalk and we have to wait for the apples to drop off rather than pick them. Now it has been checked I have no doubt it will retaliate by not producing as many apples this year.