Lovely weather for ducks!

The ducks were back again this morning, they have been coming nearly every day for the last 2 weeks. They have a good forage in the flower beds so hopefully they are gobbling up the slugs.

We have had a lot of rain over the last few days, our water butts are overflowing. I keep trying to save as much of the rain water as I can by topping up the watering cans & buckets - it seems such a waste to let it just run down the drain. The upside is that a lot of the new plants we put in recently have been well watered & things are really starting to grow !

 

 

 

In the veg garden the rhubarb & blackcurrants are growing like crazy.

This clematis montana is jam packed with buds

 

 

 

 

All that rain outside just makes you want to curl up in your bed & snooze !

Keeping shopping costs down!

 Once a month we drive 40 mins to the nearest large town where we can do a bulk supermarket shop. We drive to Kendal in the Lake District where there is a Morrisons, Aldi & Poundstretcher all within the same retail park. We literally buy everything we need for ourselves & the dogs for a whole month in one go.

As we live in the country it works out cheaper to shop this way than to keep using petrol to shop locally & unfortunately pay much higher prices. Our local supermarket is Booths, it is only a few miles from where we live but for those of you not familiar with Booths, think Waitrose for the rich! We couldn't possibly afford to do a months shop there, the cost would be at least 4 times the amount we pay shopping at Morrisons, Aldi & Poundstretcher.

 I have been thinking of writing this post for a while but was spurred on to pass on some money saving tips after seeing that A Girl Called Jack has been in the news this week. I have been reading her blog for the last few months & applaud her ingenuity & thrifty approach to balancing her food budget to just £10 a week.

 If you haven't heard of A Girl Called Jack read it HERE.http://agirlcalledjack.com/

 

 

And so for you dog owners on a budget here are my money saving tips for feeding 3 hungry hounds.

This dog biscuit is the basis for our dogs meals. I buy a large 15kg bag from our local Farm & Equine Shop, it costs £10.49 & will last 3 dogs for 3 weeks.

Added to this to bulk it out I mix in Aldi Pasta, 29p for 500g

Then something tasty; this is usually Pilchards 98p (does the 3 of them for one meal / night ) Frozen Chicken Portions £2.50 for 9 (does the 3 of them for 3 meals / nights)  or the cheapest & best value of all Savers Frozen Sausages £1 for 20 sausages (does the 3 of them for 2 meals / nights). The sausages are the best value as they only work out at 5p a sausage, making the total cost of each dogs meal approx 36p. That is based on a portion/ cup full  of dog biscuit, portion/ 2 cups cooked pasta & 3 sausages per dog.

This is Morrisons Frozen Chicken portions £2.50, there are usually 9 portions in here which means they will make 3 days meals for the dogs. If you can get them Aldi's Frozen Chicken Portions are much better value at only £1.79 for the same weight. Unfortunately they are not always in stock.

This is a Pilchard tea, it works out at 53p per dog - one of their more expensive meals!

Obviously to keep all this food we have a large chest freezer & I cook their meals in bulk to keep costs down.

Bon Appetit doggies!

A Rainy Day Walk in the Forest

I took my friends dogs for a walk in the forest this morning. She has a bad cold so I offered to take them for a good walk so they would then settle down for the rest of the day & she wouldn't have to take them out again until teatime.

Come on ! this is the way

Hurry up back there you old girls!

 

There is some spectacular & strange looking lichen growing on some of the trees. When you get close up some of it actually looks like seaweed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There has been alot of rain the past few days as you can see from the water under this uprooted tree. This morning was very wet but as most of the walk was under the canopy of the forest we didn't get too wet.

 

 

 

When I got back home I discovered someone had been sleeping in my bed !

Oh ! you caught me !

Well as I'm already here, I might as well just go back to ....

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

In the garden there was another visitor, a pheasant. You can just see him between the gate posts walking along the stone top of the wall.

I'm off to do some work now, my Ebay shop doesn't run itself & sales have been pretty slow lately. I'm seriously starting to think of other options. I've been having a look at Etsy & I might have a go at selling some handmade things. Anyone got experience of selling on Etsy ? let me know what you think of it, good or bad.

A Glorious Sunny Day Gardening

We decided to add a clematis to this apple tree so that it can scramble through the branches for extra colour during the summer.

We have lots of stone in our garden, you only have to dig a couple of inches down to come up with a bucket full ! We live in limestone country so the stuff is everywhere. I edged the border of the bed with limestone from our garden & then filled the centre with pebbles bought from our local garden centre. It looks a lot neater than it did before but the main reason for doing this is to keep the weeds down & keep it looking tidy.

This is a small hazel tree we put in last year, I've edged this with limestone too but ran out of pebbles so this one will have to wait until tomorrow to finish it. 

This is the next project, this cherry tree needs a good weed !

 

I edged this flower border too, I'm pretty pleased with it.

This border is approx 30ft long so it's going to take me a while to finish this one!

These are my attempt at upside down tomatoes. If you haven't heard about these before, I got the idea from Tracey Smith at International Downshifting Week, click HERE to watch her video on how to make these.

A few nice photos of some of the flowers in our garden.