Selfsufficientish.com

You ain't got broad beans in the basket. Nor carrots. The raspberries are over. We've been inundated. Tomatoes are late this year due to them getting off to a poor start. We're between lettuce crops - one gone and the other not quite ready. New potatoes in store and being eaten.

Has anyone read the Rivers of London by Ben Dylan Aaronovitch - these and the following on ones were what led me to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Light hearted, daft, but a good read I reckon.

Now I have avoided the supermarket. All done online and delivered to the door. As I don't eat meat and veggies are roaring off the allotment, well it's only tinned and dry stuff which weighs. Let the big strong van take the weight.

Oh the cabbage whites here are playing kissing games but there are not very many of them.

The multitude of sparrows had a go at some small PSB before it was netted - is returning, was late, may come to nothing more than cabbage leaves but we'll see.

I've done the unromantic go and have a hair cut. Also caught up with a couple of favourite eateries. Did buy two plates at different shops on the way to the eateries. But discovered that shopping is no fun. But I've the raspberry canes to prune, bits to do on the plots and the annual (rather late) b...

ina wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:14 am

Oh, another doorstop kind of book I love - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke). British magic at its best.

Now there we can agree on that

ina wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:14 am

Hadn't heard of Robin Hobb - will investigate!

Nice easy reading after some of the other things you have listed

My Amazon Fire (Kindle equivalent) has provided a lot of trash reading or as Maggie puts it "escapism". It's what you get for paying Amazon £7.99 a month. I've got one or two classics (The Night Circus, The left hand side of darkness) that I paid for to keep but mostly it's cheap and cheerful. Daugh...

That's the trouble with wood fired heating. It's the planning in advance to have the wood. Mind it's the same with many ways of saving money around the house. The preparation is what counts.

I think that things have quietened down now that the lock down regulations have been eased and there are places to go. But the local Facebook pages for the three months at the height of lock down and just after were full of posts from people who had been clearing space and leaving stuff at the garde...

Do you have a supply of wood ready to use Viper - dried and seasoned? It can be a tad expensive if you have to go and buy from an empty storage space. Trees normally come down autumn and winter don't they so won't be ready till a year hence at least.

It's plastic free July and I'm freezing excess broad beans and peas for the future. Of course into plastic bags. Seems to be no other option. If the supermarkets had something else than plastic to see their freezer contents in we minor people might have a similar option but it seems that till the bi...

Watching other people in the line of bungalows and on other forums, what they seem to have missed most is going somewhere to meet other people. The gathering in the pub, the coffee shop or cafe/restaurant seems to be a major social activity but with the restrictions supposedly still in place with re...

In the end I managed 14 weeks of just going to the allotments most days and staying home the rest. I had one breakout to go to the local collection point for Amazon when I wanted a snood to act as a face cover for travelling on the buses to the allotments and back. Had I been a bit more organised I ...

You know how to get the most out of space then. I've been running two allotments for a couple of years for self and family. And yes we've done well but the space hasn't been used well enough. Will put one plot back out to see if someone else wants it when it's clear of crops.

Nope. The powers that be can't even tell us what was likely to happen yesterday after they had done it.