As our last lockdown ( hopefully ) come to an end, we've been busy trying to finish up a few projects before we go out and about. We've done as much as we can in our garden using what we have on hand. A trip to a couple of garden centres is high on our priority list to buy a few more plants.
Darren has installed a few new internal doors to the spare bedrooms. These were given to us almost a year ago for free. Now we need to do a bit of sanding then lots of painting.
Here's what else we've been up to -
* Baked three loaves of wholemeal bread with extra goodness.
* Made up a batch of dried seasoned bread crumbs. I added a small bag of extra crunchy corn flakes that were gifted to us. Hopefully the bread crumbs will be extra crunchy.
* Fed lots of garden snails to the chickens. I go snail hunting almost every day and seem to find so many. Better in the chicken's tummies that the snails eating my plants.
* Picked silverbeet, sugar snap peas and parsley from the garden.
* Found lots of self sown seedlings growing in the garden. I dug up quite a few forget me not seedlings and replanted them to fill in gaps around the garden.
* Filled up a thermos with leftover boiled water from the kettle when we boil it for our breakfast cuppas. This gives us enough boiled water for morning tea and sometimes afternoon tea. If we don't use it all for cuppas, it's used to cook veggies for dinner.
* Once again Woolworths over charged me for packets of tissues. When I pointed this out they gave me three packets for free and charged me the correct price for the others. I was also over charged for a 5 kilo bag of rice. When I returned it they gave it to me for free. That was worth $20 ( not that I would pay that much ). It certainly pays to check your receipt after shopping.
* Used cut up old socks to tie our standard roses to their garden stakes. The socks are sturdy but have some give which reduces damage to the plant stem.
* Over the last few weeks we've been mulching our garden for free. I asked on a local Facebook page about sourcing mulch that wasn't full of weed seeds. People gave me a few suggestions but they were out of our price range. A man who follows that page contacted me and offered as much mulch as I needed for free. He'd just had a tree chopped down and mulched by a contractor. We estimate the mulch we took was worth over $200. We've mulched just about all our garden beds and still have 8 big bags left. Such an amazing blessing.
* Darren juiced the last of the lemons off our tree. We've frozen the juice in ice cube trays.
* Baked whole orange cakes using oranges from the freezer. I made the cakes in various sizes to suit the occasion. Small ones are great for the grandbabies or to take to my card making group. Medium size is great for Darren and I over a couple of days. The larger one is good for having visitors or for when we visit other people.
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| Sugar snap peas from the garden |
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| Making my own from scratch. |
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| Whole orange cakes |
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| The apricots are growing fast. |
Sounds like a wonderful week.
ReplyDeleteIt was thankyou.
DeleteHi Wendy. The time you've spent in your garden over lockdown sounds very productive and it looks lovely and colourful. Whole orange cakes look delicious! My frugal things of late:
ReplyDelete* planted cucumbers, spring onion, cosmos, lettuce and cherry toms in our garden
* picked lettuce and herbs from our garden
* planted a salvia that I grew from cutting and gave another to a neighbour as a
gift:) I've now potted up two new cuttings to see if they grow too.
* made a fortnightly meal plan and shopped/cooked for that
* baked choc chip cookies, peanut butter biscuits, sweet potato brownies,
homemade muesli bars and pumpkin scones - most went into the freezer
* added 6 x bottles of our favourite pasta sauce to pantry as it was on a good
special
* used 10% off discount + redeemed $20 worth of reward points off my grocery shop
this week
* started sewing up a dress using fabric & cotton already in my stash
* finished knitting a washcloth and started another one. These will be xmas gifts.
* found three books for xmas gifts in a lovely little second hand bookshop
* received a gift card and a lovely nature DVD as gifts which was very generous
Enjoy being able to go out and buy those plants you are wanting for your garden, Wendy.
Meg:)
Wow Meg !! You've done so much baking. I'm sure the family will enjoy it.
DeleteWhat a great blog entry, Wendy. Your breadcrumbs look interesting…what are all the layers? Aside from the cornflakes, are they just different breads…and is the white layer salt? I also love the tip of using cut up socks for garden ties. I dont know why I hadn't thought of it, seeing as I use old stockings (which aren’t as readily available as they once were; I rarely wear them these days.
ReplyDeleteBread crumbs down the bottom, corn flakes next, salt, onion powder, garlic powder, parsley and paprika. I then mixed it all together. I just thought it looked interesting with all the layers.
DeleteJust a word of advice regarding the live mulch. Add some nitrogen to the soil. Live mulch ( which is mulch that is under a year old) sucks the nitrogen from the soil and plants.
ReplyDeleteLisa
Thankyou. I watched Laura on Garden Answer explain this yesterday.
DeleteYou have done so much to reduce waste and reduce items. Well done.
ReplyDeleteThis week I bought some cheaper items at the Reject Shop. Everything was just fine except I did not enjoy the oats. Most of the items were 50 cents for around 500g of product.