Policeman Catches Young Children In A Pond Print.

 Another old Victorian advert poster print.

Apparently it was an American advert for a fishing tackle and it was painted 🎨 by GF Gilman.  You can buy the said poster on Amazon.  I would says our framed one is an original.

Any American or Canadian blog readers and writers like Debby (Life's Funny Like That) familiar with the artist or the poster?

I am going to keep it and hang it close to Pears soap framed poster I showed you the other day.

Asleep In The Garlic.

 I was weeding and potting up plants in the polytunnel the other day and I noticed someone fast asleep lying in my garlic patch.

Domino is 12 now and a semi retired smallholding vermin controller but sleeping on the job is just not Cricket.  

You just can't get the staff.🙂

A Cheap Tea.

 We harvested some more leeks and some kale and some of my Japanese onions the other day and we bought a tray of  cheap beef mince from you know where?  

I diced and peeled two supermarket potatoes and placed it in a pan with 2 stock cubes and half filled the pan with cold water:

This was obviously taken before our tea was cooked on the kitchen stove.

Half an hour later our mince meat stew was ready to eat.  There was enough to feed a family of four people.

It's good old stodge.  Not particularly appetising but it was full of sustenance and vitamins and our homegrown vegetables.

The meal cost two Euros to make.  It's a meal that my mother made once a week.

Can you make a meal for less than 2 Euros?  

Nets And Net Curtains To Keep The Birds 🐦 Off My Vegetables.

 The pests of the air had a good aerial attack of some of my brassicas in my plastic raised beds on Friday.

So it was all hands on deck and battlestations.  I found an old fishing net and J went looking in the airing cupboard or they say  "hot press"( here in 🇮🇪) for some old net curtains.

She came back with a carrier bag full of them and we draped them to cover the vulnerable  plants and raised beds:

Lace net curtains and below old fishing nets.

My ex heating oil tanks are full of brassicas and covered with an old fishing net.  The nets seem to be working fine against bird damage and the net curtains should prevent any cabbage whites laying eggs and caterpillars devouring them.  The nets on the barrels covering the carrots and parsnips seem to be working well.

My kind of vegetables gardening means you do not have to spend much money pursuing your hobby and grub for your tea.  

A very cheap meal on my next post.

More Charity Shop Treasure Finds.

My brother gave us two pictures  he found and bought in a charity shop recently.

The picture above is a Pears soap Victorian lady sat
 on a gate holding an apple.

I looked at the Bixby eye in the gallery on my mobile phone and it took me to Etsy saying there was a similar one on that site for sale for 170 Euros but it is no longer available.

Our framed poster is from around 1886 and was probably displayed where people gathered on buses, the Underground, music halls and shops?  Do you know anything about Pears soap advert posters?

I believe the adverts were for toilet soap and the people who bought were middle class.  Not ordinary folk like myself who used Carbolic soap.

I won't be selling it and it's  hung on a nail and it's replaced a modern picture that will be hopefully  sold at a carboot sale this summer.

There's  a lot of cheap print copies but it's nice to have one your great grandmother probably looked at.  

Pears toilet soap was aimed at the middle class market not scruffy smallholders and polytunnel  owners like yourself.

I will write ✍️ another post about another poster find another time.

Have you found any treasures in a charity shop or carboot sale?

Weeding And Pointing The Second Hand Patio.

 Do you remember when I made a patio with old paving slabs last year?  I had repurposed them from a path that was no longer needed.  A year later and I still hadn't got around to pointing it.  Tomorrow I will stop procrastinating 🙂.

On Wednesday morning we decluttered the patio and hand weeded the gaps in between the paving slabs.

All organically weeded and swept clean and ready for pointing.  

I suppose it could do with a pressure wash but it will do for the sunshine we get here?  Saying that we dined alfresco on Monday evening.  It's months since we last sat outside.

I mixed a 4 to1 dry sand and cement mix by hand.  We brushed the mortar in the joints inbetween the paving slabs and I firmed it in with the blade of a builders trowel.  It took 3 buckets of mortar and we completed it in two hours.

An hour later and the April showers arrived and watered the mortar for us.  Another job done.

Have you recently done any DIY jobs in the garden that cost nothing?

They Taste The Same.

 According to Professor Google 22 billion Pounds is spent on bread and cereal in the UK (not forgetting England) every year.

So what do you have for your breakfast Dave?

Good question.  👍 

Well I am a real ☕️ person.  So a cafetiere (French Press) of  black (two sugars) starts my day.  Sometimes I devour half a packet of biscuits.  Recently I having been having a bowl of Bixies:

We get them from our local German garden centre and beer providers and supermarket in Bantry.

I rarely go food shopping so I don't know how much they cost compared to Weetabix?  But I honestly can not tell any difference in the breakfast cereals.

I must compare other foods to see if there are cheaper alternatives.  We paid 2.49 Euros for a pack of 36.  

Any suggestions of cheaper /similar options that you buy ?