A weekend of rest and relaxation

This weekend we both had three days off together and the plan was to get ahead with some home tasks, especially firewood for the winter. However, our bodies had other ideas, Brian was having particularly bad sciatica and hayfever, and on Friday evening Lucy’s shoulder locked into a painful strain which lasted for the whole three days.

So, manual jobs were off the agenda, and instead we had a more relaxing weekend.

On Saturday we visited some open gardens in a nearby village, and we were glad we did that because we weren’t able to visit the open gardens in our own village on Sunday – it was rainy, and we were too tired and achey. Instead, Brian made oat cookies which we ate while watching a film on DVD:

Ready for delicious cookies

And then we went out for an evening walk in the village, ending up in the churchyard where we looked in awe at the huge variety of clouds including these ones with shapes that reminded us of dolphin or whales’ tails:

And when we got home, we had chips from the Chinese take-away with veggie burgers and the first of our home-grown kale while watching Shed of The Year – can any restaurant experience beat that?

Today we got the lawn mowing done, and then went on two exciting trips. First, to the library where Lucy picked up two novels, which one will she read first? No shopping trip in memory has ever resulted in bringing home anything as exciting as library books are, and the cost is £NOTHING!

And then we had a wonderful afternoon walking around a nearby nature reserve, with a picnic in the woods. We saw many kinds of damsel and dragonflies, a hobby and some baby pheasants, and so many orchids – it was very inspiring.

We spent a lot of time in the garden over the weekend – pottering, sky-watching, reading and taking photos. The garden is entering it’s summer lushness right now and so many things make us want to stop and savour it.

We were also thrilled to be listed as ‘Very Inspiring Bloggers’ this week – we’ve added our own 10 nominations to this page. Thank you, Tiny Trail!

Simple Living Review, Money Month 3 (Year 2)

Can’t wait to eat that kale!

It’s the 21st, which means it’s the end of another money month and time to look back and review how we’re doing. We’re now 15 months in to deliberately simplifying our lives, and it really is becoming easier and easier to want and spend less. Our lives are increasingly being lived in a different way, where time is our main currency – and we’re also getting better at how we spend that!

This month actually felt very financially spendy. Lucy bought some jewellery, but it was with birthday money. We also had lots of other little costs, such as medication for hayfever season and the annual sunblock supply, which we thought would add up much more than they did. We have actually had one of our best months ever in terms of total money saved, and it equated to 35% of our income.

Here’s what we bought other than the usual food, drink and consumables:
– A pair of long handled shears
– Floor mats for the car
– Fixing bicycle wheel
– Jewellery with birthday money
– 3 visits to Open Gardens
– A set of second hand metal shelves for the garden
– A ceramic frying pan
– A nail brush
– Sunblock
– Father’s day trip

Time has been on our minds this month, and how to slow it down. Spring seems to flash by so fast. Lucy has found that part of her problem was having too many hobbies and things to do every day, and by spreading them out a bit more, each day feels more spacious and lingering. For example, it’s now yoga every other night instead of every night, giving time for more evening wanders in the garden together, reading, etc.

The best area of savings was our work-related food. The plastic containers bought last month have continued to be brilliant for Lucy, providing a full breakfast, lunch and snack every day. (And by reducing the hobbies, there’s more time to spend on making the food up the night before!).

Carrot, hummus and lentil chips every workday!

It’s going to be a more expensive month next as we have a big bill to pay and clothes to replace among other things, but there’s always areas of the budget we can focus on reducing when other ones are high.

Our garden harvest will start being useable soon, this year we are focussing on kale, salad and tomatoes. It’s going to be a tasty summer!

Kale protected from pigeons

30 Days Wild in June: Over half way!

We’re continuing to follow 30 Days Wild and seek out encounters with the natural world every day for June.

Of course, this should just be our way of life every day. We are part of the natural world, and one of the things which ‘simple living’ means to us is trying to edit our lives so that the impact we have is benign or beneficial to the rest of nature, rather than at odds with it. That means less plastic, chemicals and pollution wherever we can, and more beneficial actions such as wildlife gardening and using natural products and materials.

Still, it’s nice to dedicate a month to wildlife watching in this way and to make a conscious effort to share with each other – and with you on the blog – what our nature highlight was each day!

June 11: Brian saw a big cormorant in the river in the city centre, and Lucy spent a long time pollinating the tomatoes in the indoors lean-to with a little paintbrush, pretending to be a bee.

June 12: Starting to see some bigger moths on our evenings looking in the garden, but nothing we’ve yet been able to photograph or identify.

June 13: It rained most of the day, which was great news for our frogs and plants, and created this incredible natural droplet art on the leaf of a montbretia.

Rainwater droplet art

June 14: We visited some middle class suburban open gardens. There was very little for wildlife, which really motivated us to keep our own garden wild. However there was a pond in one garden which gave Lucy her first close-up look at a newt’s face – a beautiful little creature!

June 15: Brian saw two damselflies mating. On looking at this photo it took us quite a while to work out which body belonged to which damselfly!

Where does one end and the other begin?

June 16: Its now the time of year when the trees on part of the cycle path to Lucy’s work are dangling so low that you have to weave in and out of them or be hit in the face. Its actually quite a nice way to start the day, dancing with trees!

June 17: An evening in the garden listening to blackbirds singing their going to bed songs. If you listen long enough, it seems any blackbird’s song will contain a ridiculous noise to make you laugh. We heard one coughing and one sniggering.

June 18: A greenfinch and dunnock duet in our Christmas tree was what greeted us when we opened the door this morning.

June 19: Brian put these sweet peas in the bathroom. Stunning! The fragrance did become a little bit overpowering after a while…

June 20: Getting excited waiting for the night scented stock to release it’s evening fragrance and wondering how it works: right now it smells of absolutely nothing, but in a few hours  – WOW! We didn’t grow enough this year (two pots failed), next year it’s going to be a different story…one lesson from this year is to prioritise the plants which give us (and wildlife) the most pleasure.

P.S. The pollinating worked!

A teeny weeny baby tomato

30 Days Wild in June: the first 10 days

We are doing 30 Days Wild, making a conscious effort to engage with wildlife and the natural world every day in June. Here’s our first update, from the first 10 days.

1 June: Read a wildlife gardening book from the library and discussed making a pond

2 June: Went out in the garden at nightfall to look at the rising full moon and Saturn through binoculars (Saturn appears as a gold blob – but still exciting to know it’s there!). There was also a newly fledged blackbird in the salad tank this afternoon.

3 June: Watched urban peregrines during lunch break: could see the wings of the chicks as they exercised from within the nest platform

4 June: There were an amazing amount of bees in the garden. We tried taking photos but they were too quick for us so we just enjoyed the sounds of their buzzing.

5 June: Lucy ate her breakfast outdoors next to a pond with a moorhen and chicks.

6 June: Although we enjoyed UK wildlife today of course, the highlight was visiting a wildlife park with loose small monkeys! Lucy got to stroke the tail of a tamarind as it scampered past – very soft!

7 June: A morning in the woods where we admired this cardinal beetle on cow parsley. Then an evening walk where we saw a glossy red fox running with a young rabbit in it’s mouth.

8 June: Put garden clippings all along the back of the garden where we keep a long strip of habitat piles. Once it got dark we went out to listen for hedgehogs. There were lots of interesting noises, and a few bats flying around, but we haven’t seen hedgehogs for a couple of years. We’re not giving up hope though.

9 June: Scattered leftover native cornflower seeds near the roadside coming home from work.

10 June: We had an unexpectedly close wildlife encounter: a fledgling blackbird (probably the one in the picture below) came into the house and got into a panic, and had to be gently escorted back outside by Brian! Then we had an evening walk alongside farm fields, and heard a tawny owl – our first in the village for several years, but we would probably hear them more often if we had more evening walks.

Immersing ourselves in the natural world so much lately has been brilliant and makes our lives better every day. It also means we spend more time thinking and talking about ways that we can help wildlife: creating a pond, putting up nest boxes for sparrows and planting more wild food sources are some of the ideas we might be writing more about soon!