Lynne Cim

Something I always wanted to try is a personal mosquito trap. I am a mosquito magnet. we live upstate NY USA. Sitting with a group of people and I'm usually the only one they will bite, I can easily get 10 bites in 10 minutes. Since they are always around me, I've noticed they have a typical behavior - they fly toward you and then land on something behind you. Then they attack. I've always wanted to set up a landing behind where I am sitting and coat it with oil. If their wings touch the oil they can no longer fly. Another idea is to use cedar oil on my skin to mask whatever is attracting them to me. We used to not be able to go outside due to mosquitos unless drenched in deet, but that recently changed in the last 2 years. I think it's the dragon flies, we now have some the size of birds. I get so happy when one buzzes by me!  Our new neighbor may also be treating the sitting water next to his house with mosquito dunks too.

I recently learned I can borrow a pressure washer from my library, ha!  Went there to see if I could borrow / use a high powered microscope but they did not have one, but found they had pressure washers on lend.  

I've flame tested buckwheat hulls both at home and in a government approved lab (when flame testing our buckwheat hull mattresses). I could never get them to catch fire. In the lab one of our fabric pods burst open and the hulls shot out and extinguished the flame. The lab told me that was certainly a first!  Anyway I thought it maybe could help someone here.  See my flame test videos here

Thank you for the note about the seeds attracting the asparagus beetles, good to know.  I moved my asparagus from one garden bed to another. The old bed had some random spears pop up over the years that never seem to have a problem with the bugs. The new patch I created had so many bugs we gave up on it. My thought is to just plant some asparagus randomly on my property (with a pirates map drawn to remember where they are) to see if keeping them separate would work in keeping them bug free.

A sled carries our Echo-flow battery which powers our small electric snow blower. I just pull the battery sled along with me as I go. Got me through the last dump of 30"

Before we had our EV we used to park at the end of the driveway and then shovel a foot path to the house. I hauled groceries with the sled.

But now that we have an EV we have to pull all the way up to plug in so entire driveway gets plowed now.  

Keeping a set of lounge chair cushions out front helps as I cover the windshield so I don't have to scrape the glass or free up the wipers, works great.

I do want to set something up across the end of the driveway to melt the ever growing berm. Maybe I'll lay out a long something to make a channel I can  insert a crock pot full of water inside to melt the snow away!    

Purslane would be an easy one for use in salads and stir fry.

(Just make sure you look up and become familiar with the poisonous lookalike as they will tend to grow in same spots)

I've been out collecting some from my front path and repotting them - hoping to bring it inside for the winter as succulents do well in my home so I figured purslane may thrive too.  They already grew twice the size in a week and new little shoots are even coming up so fingers crossed as they are packed with omega-3's

Maybe this grasshopper ate too many raspberries?

I've learned about the possible fold from a video on Youtube - thanks to Pete Firman.  After doing this with some cardboard I can see it being quite a useful bit of knowledge to have in your back pocket for a future project.

I am a hoarder for sure.  For example, I saved all the heavy springs from my kids old trampoline, they surely could have another use.  I saved poles from an old canopy that no longer had a canopy. One day I used a spring to connect 2 of the poles and I discovered I could bend them into any angle I needed. The joy I got in discovering the springs fit perfectly into the poles and could connect them into any shape gave me a lot of joy imagining their potential. I still don't know exactly how I will use them but something else will catch my eye one day to make the poles + springs all make sense. This is the true joy of hoarding for me, the stored potential.

I find now that I have more time as our nest has emptied, my supply of random stuff is actually getting used at a more rapid pace. But I have to keep it all in my storage area and not in the house. My husband does not hoard, he prefers to buy parts as he needs them it but I am always running to the storage shed to show him we already have something on hand that would do the job.  

There is a phycological aspect to my hoarding, not sure where it comes from. It's more than just being creative, I do have some serious attachments to a few large projects I just cannot part with. They are part of my identity, my dreams for my retirement, part of who I may finally be in the end. But in an odd way, if they were gone tomorrow I know I would get over it in a day or two and simply move on. It's such an odd thing our relationship with things!

Now that I am older, I switched to one long hot bath a week + one or two spray bottle showers in between. This way we only need to turn on the water heater once a week on bath with hair wash day.  

My bottle shower is half boiling water from teapot + half cold tap water in a large soda bottle with a pressurized pump sprayer on top. Set nozzle to mist an it's all I need to take a long, normal time full body shower which I take standing in our normal shower.  I also use another sprayer on a smaller bottle for my composting toilet bidet to avoid having to use toilet paper for no. 1's

I use a bidet (the kind that hooks on your toilet seat) so that keeps me feeling pretty clean.  My deodorant (a few drops of milk of magnesia + essential oils) works SO well it's hard to tell when I need a shower - but I should really research if it's safe for daily use.

When I am somewhere without facilities, I already have my off grid routine in place, so I never feel like I am roughing it.

Thanks for the tip on covering hair, I will be doing this more from now on when I am working - reminds me of my grandmother, she always did this.



I want to upgrade to a large stainless steel bottle.  Anyone know of a large (2+ liter) bottle that has the same threads as a regular soda bottle?