Has it Sprung?!

 

Well hasn’t it been lovely starting to see the sights and hear the sounds of spring over the last few weeks? All of a sudden there is birdsong everywhere - our local Blackbirds are shouting from the trees, the Wrens are posturing all over the place, and the Blue, Great and Long Tailed Tits are chasing round in circles! Possibly my favourite of all at this time of year though are the Dunnocks. Generally shy, skulking little birds - drab in appearance with their grey heads and brown bodies - you barely see them until suddenly in spring - there they are right out in the open singing the most beautiful fluting song. Once paired up, they return to the undergrowth until the following Spring. We fairly often get one down in the garden - and in spite of their usual shyness it’s astonishingly trusting, happy to hop around even when it clearly knows we’re here, and watching,

Things are flowering beautifully all over too - although it’s to be hoped not too early allowing for the sudden cold snap and frosts this weekend. The blackthorn (above) seems to have lots of blossom again this year which promises a good haul of sloes for  the birds - and gin of course! We’ve had fairly significant frost here, although not reaching to the ground with any force, thankfully. Out and about the Magnolias are stunning this year - I’ve heard lots of people commenting on it too so that’s clearly not just down here!

Camellia too - I love the way these get so utterly covered in beautiful vibrantly coloured flowers. It’s definitely something  I would have if possible, although we definitely don’t have space here. No option for a Magnolia here either - there is a long running family joke about the space THOSE need after Auntie D planted on in their front garden years ago. My Nan tried to tell her it would grow too big and not be practical in the location she had chosen, but she was adamant that she wanted one... “They’ll be removing that again - you mark my words!” was Nan’s prophecy. Sure enough there followed a number of years of the Magnolia getting larger and larger, and of course promptly dropping its petals all over the driveway AND the parked car…and LOTS of gritted teeth from D but an utter refusal to give in and remove the offending plant. Strangely enough within a few months of Nan’s death, the tree was gone..! 

Another beautiful plant making an appearance at this time of year is the pretty blue Periwinkle - often found climbing through railings in parks - this one is a local authority gardeners favourite it seems. The pictured one is at the little gardens I often sit and eat my lunch in during the summer months - a sudden but intense splash of colour as you walk past. 

There is plenty of spring colour and life in our own garden too of course, but I’ll leave that for an “In the garden” post I think! 

Robyn

Looking back...

 

Looking all the way back to 2007 for this one, yet still a day I remember really clearly, as does MrEH.

We were in the Hebrides, and hopped on the ferry across to Barra for a day trip. If I remember rightly on leaving Uist the weather was fine, and indeed, on arrival at Ardmhor where the little ferry from Eriskay arrives, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. As we made our way around the island it began to get a little more overcast, although still fairly bright...and then we arrived at Castlebay, the main settlement on the island, to find the entire place cloaked in mist! we followed through with our intention to drive a little way up the road above the Village - the plan being that it would give us a good view across that part of the island without having to physically climb a hill that we didn't really have time to tackle, but by that stage we could really see very little at all. We parked in a convenient place and got out regardless - it was quiet, that almost eerie quiet you get in really misty conditions sometimes. Suddenly with no warning whatsoever, a gap blew in the mist and we got a view across the bay with Kisimul Castle making an appearance. I had the camera handy and so fired off a couple of shots before the mist closed in again. 

For the entire day, one half of the island stayed bright and sunny while the other was stayed foggy, cold and damp - very strange indeed, and allowing for the island only being so small, it really highlighted how localised weather can be up there!

Robyn

Looking back...

 

This handsome little chap is of course a Puffin - so many people's favourite bird it seems, I suspect mostly because of their quirky and striking appearance. This one was pictured on our second trip to the Farne Islands in July 2012, and I stumbled across the photo when looking through some older stuff on the computer I use for work. I think this is actually the third time I've used this particular photo on here - but I suspect not too many folk remember the other occasions! 

Although we've been across to Farne twice, on neither occasion have we managed to have the trip we actually expected. The first time in 2008 we landed on Staple Island but then had to leave again after a few hours because poor weather was closing in more rapidly than expected. The second time was the opposite issue - we made it to Inner Farne but an unexpected level of swell meant that we couldn't do the transfer to Staple island for the second part of the trip - we did however get an extended amount of time where we were though!

We've very much decided that we fancy a further trip to the Islands - and although it is unlikely to be this year, we might perhaps manage something in the next couple of years instead. While the loss of the Great British Beer Festival is sad, it has at least opened up holiday time for us to get back to doing all sorts of other things w enjoy! 

Frugal February…

 So there we are then - the end of the month. Were we frugal? Reasonably I think - it was after all far more about intentional spending than “spending nothing” - and it does feel as though we’ve used the month well in terms of refocusing.

The final main food shop of the month is the one above - Lidl again, and that shop earned my next level of the threshold spend coupons too - a free pack of biscuits this time! I made use of some special prices through the app again too - apples at a very advantageous price, and 15% off our favourite butter, plus pate and salad. The bakery item was the freebie from last week’s bakery spin to win thing -  I don’t make a special trip to claim those but if I am in there anyway, then I may as well grab them. 

Total shopping for the month came in at just over £200 so a long way above the previous month’s tally. I expected that though with stocking up various bits and the farmers market trip too, and it still leaves us with a bit of credit left from the months budget, so that is a win. 

Planned spending:

- The electrical works we had anticipated having done have been pushed back a little which is fine, the money is still set aside for those and they will happen early in March.

- my car needed two new tyres ahead of its upcoming MoT Test -  this isn’t a surprise though and again money is budgeted for that. As usual I shopped around, although happily our local independent place turned out to be cheapest.

- both cars needed their tax renewed in February -  both have now increased from the previous zero band to £20 per year, it will be interesting to see how long it stays at that level now! 

- we booked a well priced hotel room for an overnight stop ahead of our planned camping trip in a couple of months. It will give us a free breakfast on the way down which means we’ll be able to just head straight for the campsite and get set up rather than needing to find food when we arrive in Cornwall.

Elsewhere, we had a couple of Thursday evening beers, a Chinese takeaway with visiting friends, and I had a lovely day out in London with another pal, just beers in some cracking pubs and a lunch in Wetherspoons, the company and conversation was the most important thing! A good chunk of my personal spending money for the month remains intact, which is very useful!

Blogging about stuff like a Frugal month certainly keeps you accountable - I’d forgotten quite how much! I don’t intend to continue with a full-on frugal month through March, but I will definitely still be keeping an eye on spends, and the meal plan will be made up from the fridge, cupboards and freezer again. I will continue with keeping an eye on Olio as well as that’s proved a nice bonus. 

Robyn

February reading…

 

I confess I’m rather enjoying documenting the books I’m reading - it’s making me think more about not only the story or subject matter of the books themselves, but also about what I’m picking up to read next. I mostly read fiction - crime/mystery are favourite subjects, I particularly enjoy series that follow a central character from book to book - Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie novels, and Mark Bellingham’s Tom Thorne, those possibly appeal because they are often set in areas I know reasonably well, Edinburgh and London. I also like a novel which although fiction, has a basis in true events as well, which brings us on to the first book of this month…

Fern Britton is a name many will know from her TV work- but she is also a prolific novelist. The Good Servant takes the late Queen Elizabeth II’s governess Marion “Crawfie” Crawford as it’s central character, and deals with her story from her appointment to the Royal Household when the young princesses were just 6 & 2 years old, following her life through until her departure from the household once the Princesses had come of age, and her fall-from-grace following the publication of a book "The Little Princesses" for which she appeared to have knowingly sold personal stories against the wishes of the then Queen. The story is fiction based on fact, and extrapolates out what is known into a story of misplaced love and broken trust - and who knows how close to the real story that is? A good read anyway - I'll set this one aside to make its way to my Mum who also enjoys Britton's books. 

A change of pace and genre next - back to old favourite Lee Child's Reacher series and Echo Burning - found in a charity shop for 50p a few weeks back. It's harder and harder to find books from this series that we haven't read previously, on this trip we actually found two, the other is still on the shelf to be read in due course. I found this a little slower to get going than some - the first third of the book felt a little disjointed somehow - but once the story started playing out it turned into the usual good read with all the classic a child hallmarks - the good guys won the day, the bad guys mostly ended up dead, exactly what you expect from a Reacher book! 

Full non-fiction for my third book of the month - Spitfire Kids by Alasdair Cross deals with those remarkably young people involved with the building, flying and maintaining the poster-boy aircraft of World War II.  An absolutely fascinating read - in good part because it deals with the stories you rarely hear, about the people who are so often forgotten. From the young employees at the Supermarine factory in Southampton, to the women of the Air Transport Auxiliary via plotters and pilots, it is at times a tough read, but for anyone who enjoys learning more about the “behind the headlines” side of World War 2  history I would highly recommend it. This one has gone onto the shelf with the other books of a similar genre. 

Elly Griffiths’  “The Woman in Blue” was next off the shelf, set in the North Norfolk area so I was back to a book where I knew the basic geography of the area if not the specific location. I’ve read at least one of Griffiths books before although she isn’t an author I know well. She writes a good story though, balancing the plot with the personal lives of the characters nicely, and including just the right amount of suspense. Thoroughly enjoyable, and I will be setting this one aside to pass to Mum. 

Finally for the month another favourite author - Val McDermid - with 1979. Picked up in a charity shop, this one was set in Glasgow in 1979, and although rather different from the other works of McDermid’s I’ve read, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lead character Allie is a Junior reporter on one of the Scottish nationals, and her determination to see success along with a chance meeting on a train leads her to hook up with colleague Danny Sullivan to work on several stories with increasing levels of danger. When the worst happens, Allie finds herself first a suspect, then turning detective in a bid to track down the culprit and see justice done. A fast paced, easy read with the added interest of looking back on how things were quite so different so relatively recently (homosexuality still being illegal in Scotland, for example!). This one will make its way to the shelf with the others! 

I managed to avoid too many additional book purchases this month but did cave in to a charity shop visit on Saturday using £2 of my personal spends for 4 additions to the To Be Read pile - including 2 Lee Child’s we didn’t already have - one of those will become my first book of March. 

Robyn

February in the Garden…

 

Well here we are again - with the garden just waking up from its winters slumber. Bulbs are popping up all over the place - our work the first two winters we were here is paying off now with daffodils, tulips, muscari and of course these gorgeous crocuses too, it's just a shame that we've seen so little sunshine to really encourage them to fully open and show their faces! 

Auntie Daphne's Pulmonaria is still flowering away cheerfully - it’s always the first colour in the garden each year and never fails to make us smile with its little pink and purple flowers and spotty white leaves. In that bed is also some of the other bulbs I mentioned, the very enthusiastic lavender which I give a truly brutal haircut to once a year and yet it always forgives me and rewards me with plentiful flowers, and over the the right there is the blackcurrant bush - still quite new but obviously settling in nicely - just take a look at the buds breaking…

Such a sign of spring! Elsewhere on the fruit-front, as it were, the redcurrant and the gooseberries are looking happy enough, although no signs of buds yet. The rhubarb though has no such reservations and as last year, showing its intentions via a lovely bright patch of pink…

Before we know it that will be taking over the garden again - and providing us with plenty of crumbles, compotes and maybe even some jam this year perhaps!   

Currently keeping us fed through the “hungry gap” is the kale we planted last year, although annoyingly it has gone through the entire winter with cabbage whitefly! Nothing that a bit of a shake and a good wash won’t cure though, and it’s been ever so nice to have some fresh home grown veg all winter. 

All in all, it’s starting to feel like we’re not a million miles away from being able to get the new growing season underway, so it’s probably time to start getting the seed list finalised. Our plans are as usual to so far as possible use the free seeds we’ve got via our magazine subscription, but as always that will be topped up with purchases of any specific varieties of things we want. Time to make a list! 

Robyn

Frugal February…

 

Food spending was budgeted to be up quite a bit this week as it was our favourite local farmers market, and having not gone last month there were some bits we were low on. 

First up was Peter for lamb - £1.75 for a bag of “bones for stock”, but these as usual have plenty of meat left on them and will make a fantastic stew. Also sausages, a pack of meatballs (I do have some in the freezer still but those are already featured on the meal plan) and his final pack of liver - always popular and it makes a delicious liver, bacon and onion tea!  We had our usual treat of a sourdough loaf from lovely Adrian, then popped back outside to see Catherine on the other meat stall. I made the decision to buy the big 2kg pack of beef mince, plus a smaller pack of pork mince for a change - those have been portioned up before freezing. A piece of haslet for lunches - our weekday rolls frequently feature yellow stickered bargains so this is significantly more spendy than usual but it’s something we absolutely love so we’re very happy to buy it! I grabbed a minute steak too - so good for stir fries. Total spend at the market was £53.10 - and for great quality food, and especially meat where we are happy with the provenance, I’m very happy with that. One of the reasons I can squeeze a lot of meals out of a relatively small amount of meat is that meat this good has so much flavour- so you actually need less of it in a dish. Of course we are aware that we’re fortunate to be able to afford to buy like this, and certainly that’s a privilege that not everyone has, but often simply because you do end up using less, it really isn’t that much more expensive than a standard supermarket budget option.

Elsewhere the main weekly shop cost £24.69 - in Lidl again this week, and I claimed a free bakery item from the spin to win and chose a big punnet of mushrooms as my coupon plus threshold spend reward. Not the best value thing I could have had, I usually opt for the 7.5kg sack of potatoes but we still have enough of those from the Christmas veg wars so the mushrooms were chosen as something which I was going to buy anyway. A separate trip to Aldi for tomatoes saw a spend of £1.38 - and the rarity of having literally just bought the thing I went in there for! 

Spending elsewhere has been mostly guided by necessity- we have both been hit by the nasty lurgy that’s doing the rounds - and various over the counter medications have been purchased as a result. We’ve plans for a project in the garden which will require a fair bit of sanding - so a pack of basic face masks are winging their way to us, and my car has had a tank of fuel - although both MrEH’s diesel and oyster credit have been stretched by him sensibly electing to work from home for much of the week to avoid infecting his colleagues! Well, at least there is some benefit! 

Robyn