Finding Enough

Longer days have been lifting our spirits for some time, and June brought the longest day. Up here in Scotland that meant sunset at 10pm. I celebrated the occasion in slightly hippy fashion with an organised sunset solstice swim, but more about that later.

It is very easy to lose track of time with long, light evenings and very few commitments, especially as I don’t wear a watch since my, previously trusty, Fitbit broke (annoyingly the technology still works fine, but the connection to the strap is irreparably broken). We have regularly found ourselves realising it is nearly 8 o’clock and we ought to do something about dinner really…..

We didn’t have any visitors in June, so had a relaxed month. We focussed on getting some outside jobs done, when rain or midges didn’t stop play. We did have a short trip in the campervan for a couple of nights to support a friend’s art exhibition, but otherwise were at home.

I thought the wildflowers here were impressive in May, but June has been incredible, especially the native orchids that seem to be appearing everywhere. I have been slowly learning to identify new species.

We have enjoyed watching the resident blackbird family develop, and were quite sad when they moved out. They were very tolerant of us by the end, but we have not seen any sign of them since they fledged.

It felt like we didn’t make much progress with the house, with a lot of gardening and veg growing to do, but actually looking back we didn’t do too badly. We built a bench in what will be my studio space, repaired and repainted a number of timber doors and windows and I made it across the bottom 1.5m of the first wall removing plastic paint and cement (photo at the end). This has fortuitously coincided with finding out that a neighbour has scaffolding that they inherited with the property and they don’t need. They have offered to lend it to us for as long as we need, providing we come and help dismantle it. This sounds more than fair, although I suspect we may need to bring some WD40, as it has been in place against his barn for years rather than months.

Financial Update:

Freedom fund value – £1,298,916 (up £13K on last month)

Expenditure – £1,909 (or a 1.8% withdrawal rate)

Earned income – £0

I had to increase the Y axis on the freedom fund tracker graph this month, as we are nearly off the top of the scale with another 13k increase in June, for yet another all time high. We have been talking about liquidating a little cash into a dedicated travel fund while the going is good. We are very aware of the impact of drawing down too much in the early years of retirement, especially with an expensive year last year, but we do need to balance that with enjoying ourselves and making the most of our freedom. It is a difficult balance. I have always been conservative with spending. If anything, Mr.Wombat is worse, so it definitely does not come naturally to splash the cash (probably how we managed to be in this position in the first place). However, I don’t want to look back in the future and regret not taking the opportunity while we are both fit and healthy and able to do so.

It was a low cost month this month too, the couple of nights on a campsite were paid for last month and there were few other large expenses. We bought a few things for the house, totalling £368, and a couple of meals out on our short trip, but otherwise there wasn’t much out of the ordinary to report.

There was no income of any sort other than what we drew down from ISAs this month.

Non-Financial Goals:

Forage something every month

This month – cleavers. Where I grew up, we called this goosegrass. You know – the sticky stuff with small burrs that you try to stick to your mates’ backs without them noticing? If my nieces are anything to go by, this is still a popular pastime for kids on enforced walks today. It has been nearly as interesting learning some of the alternative common names for wild plants as learning about their uses. Cleavers are also apparently known as sticky willy, catchweed and robin-run-the-hedge.

You can infuse them in water overnight to make cleaver water (which apparently tastes a bit like cucumber), but I opted for nettle and cleaver pesto with cashew nuts, which was delicious.

Wild swim at least once a month in as many different places as possible – 5 swims in June including that solstice swim.

Trying to get 18 people to form a circle in a flowing river is not a simple task, but I don’t think we did too badly considering. The drone was too far away to capture the wildflower crowns supplied for the occasion. It was a lovely evening with an interesting cross section of people and included hot chocolate and cake round a firepit afterwards. I’m definitely putting it in the calendar again for next year. This was in the same river spot that I swam for the first time last month.

I enjoyed checking out a new coastal swim spot in June too (the beach photo at the end of the post). There was quite a lot of seaweed and stricken jellyfish, which I was assured by a local swimmer was very unusual in the bay, sheltered by a harbour wall. It was probably due to the strong winds and the high tide of the day before. The sea was much warmer than I had anticipated though – probably why there were so many jellyfish around. Although there were a lot of them both on the sand and in the water, we managed to pick our way through to open water. It prompted me to look up the ones we had seen when I got home. Most (blue jellyfish) would have only given a mild nettle-like sting, but there were a couple of lions mane and compass jellyfish, which are reported to be a bit more painful. I’ll know to avoid the brown ones in future.

The other 3 swims were up the road at our local inland loch swim spot.

Other highlights of the month included my first sourdough loaf, the first harvests from the vegetable garden, a new door knocker, and the construction of the base for the new garage / workshop (at last!)