Creative Accountancy

Hemerocallis stella de oro

I am deeply indebted to Arabella Sock for teaching me her personal brand of creative accountancy.

This involves deciding not to spend money on one thing, thus saving that money, which means you then have it available to buy something else.

For instance, if I don't go out and buy a M&S chicken and bacon sandwich for my lunch tomorrow, I will have saved myself £2.45 and therefore I can almost afford this nice Achillea in the RHS sale. Hmmm ... perhaps I had better not buy the zesty lemon cheesecake and the orange juice as well, then I can afford both the Achillea and the delivery charge, give or take a couple of pence.

The fact that I don't eat meat and am allergic to citrus is beside the point. I didn't buy the things from M&S so I have saved the money on them and I have it available to spend. And as the Achillea is in the sale, I will have saved £2.50 by not buying it at full price, so I could afford to buy another plant as well!

I've never tried this brand of accountancy on R before - he has a PhD in mathematical logic, so I thought he might somehow manage to find some sort of flaw in it. However, yesterday we decided, to my disappointment, not to visit Future Gardens this summer. I would have loved to have seen their wildflower meadows, especially as they have a 2 for 1 offer on their website at the moment. However, we thought that the meadows will probably be past their best now, I'm not that keen on what I've seen of the show gardens and I know R will hate them, even though it was quiet when Easygardener went in June it will probably be full of noisy children now it's the school holidays, and £12.50 is a pretty steep admission charge even with the 2 for 1 offer, especially given that R isn't that interested in going at all and would rather sit in the car and read his book while I go round on my own.


Lavandula hidcote

Perhaps we will manage to get there another year, before the school holidays start, especially if there is another special offer, or if I can find someone else to accompany me. In the meanwhile, I managed to persuade R that if we weren't going there, then a visit to a garden centre for some HRT* would go a little way to making up for it. Luckily we have one with a farm shop and we needed some fruit and veg, so while R found those, I had a wander round the plants and discovered when I went back to him that a Hemerocallis and a Lavender had accidentally fallen into my basket. What could I do? - I couldn't put them back - it would have been cruel - they'd been unhappily languishing in the sale section and clearly needed me to give them some TLC. They were also only £1.49 each.


Hemerocallis stella de oro and hoverfly

"You aren't supposed to be buying any more plants until we've moved", said R. "I know" I replied, "but we didn't go to Future Gardens so we saved ourselves £12.50. That means I have £12.50 to spend on plants, and these are only £2.98. I have another £9.52 to spend on plants now" (come to think of it, that's £12.52 with the money I saved by buying the plants in the sale - woohoo - must run that by R when he's nearly asleep one night). "Oh - OK", he said.

Thank you, Arabella!

*that's Horticultural Retail Therapy, for the uninitiated.