One of the things about nearly 9 years of blogging (yeah it’s been that long!) is that I get to see how everything changes and everything stays the same and my hair always looks good!
One of the things that I notice when I look back is how often I need to re-learn lessons that I thought I already knew. I also notice that each time I fail and I fail often, is that I fail a little less and thus each failure is also a tiny improvement.
All of this to say that I did not set any goals for May and I didn’t recap April goals. This is not entirely because I didn’t do anything in April, it’s more about time off work and a sprained ankle meaning that I was in the wrong frame of mind for blogging and I just found other things to do. However, I need to re-focus myself for the rest of May in a couple of areas because I’m not failing yet but I’m feeling a little out of control and need to get a grip before I crash and burn. Needing to re-set after four or five months is also a pattern that I see over the years too!
Mostly it’s about discipline and focus. I have a tendency to go off into what I want to do, not what I need to do. So I’ll spend an evening reading and forget to hang the laundry, when that chore would have taken 10 minutes and then I could have picked up the book! I’m better than I used to be, nowadays, I get the washing up done before I pick up the book. Although I can treat cooking dinner as a chore and grind it out, I slip on other things. So I need to start again.
One of the things that I’ve noticed is that if I focus on the little things, the bigger things sort themselves out. Start with the basics and the more complex things, seem less complex and challenging. So here is my re-focus list….
Saving for Christmas. Christmas and the 10 family/friends/godchildren birthdays from September to December are financially burdensome so even if I just put £10 a month into savings that’s money I’m not spending in November/December in a panic.
Food & Budget. I’ve more or less stuck to £15 a week for food but I need to start tracking it and being more aware of food and waste and not over buying too much. I’m going to re-introduce the food money purse and not just take it out of general money.
No spend week. One of the advantages of being trapped in the house is that you can’t spend money. I don’t do a lot of online shopping anymore and last week, when I was trapped in the house, I spent a grand total of £20, which was the money I gave to Ma for food shopping. So I’m naming the first week after payday, no spend week as that’s the week that I tend to get overexcited with spending. Other than food, I’m not going to buy anything. Let’s see how that works.
Housework. The golden hour before bedtime works, if I do it, so I’m going to set an alarm for 9pm to remind me. I also need to introduce the ‘just got home, half an hour’ to sort out the stuff I need to do. Going through post, putting away clothes etc. In fairness I do most of this automatically but the odd things don’t get done and I need to focus on them.
Self Care. Four years ago (ish) I wrote a post about how treating my body like it was my flat had helped me feel better about it and in a post about re-learning things, I come back to it. I need to spend a bit more time on ‘housework’ for my body. That goes to moisturiser, getting more sleep, and some work on how I fuel my body. I don’t know what that looks like yet but I’ll keep you posted!
So five things, that I’m going to focus on and think about in May and incorporate into June’s goals. My word for 2017 was focus and so time to get back to that and I’ll fail a bit less this time.
Over August, we started to try and rehabilitate the raspberries, we also planted a tiny strawberry bed from some runners.
I made plum gin from my own plums and got excited about the tomatoes
In October and November, with things really dying down, we did a bit of rearranging. We bought another 6 raised beds and laid down more weed suppressant.
We also measured and sorted out where we wanted a shed to go and planted garlic, onions and broad beans for next year.
In February, things were starting again and we replenished the woodchip, with much swearing from Ma!
We also dug over some areas for herbs and started to think about growing things again.
At the end of April, we finally got a shed.
And here we are a year later. The plot looks like this. 
We had a bit of trouble with the committee. I love that the site has a committee of people willing to put time and effort into maintaining the site. However, I had permission from them to put this up, it wasn’t too big and it didn’t encroach on the path. That someone wanted to check wasn’t a problem, the accusatory manner that was done, well it put my back up. Anyway, that dealt with, the shed was finished.
