Inge Leonora-den Ouden

BTW I love to have some kind of sellery in my mixed vegetables. My favourite is what's called 'celeriac' in English. One of those is plenty to add to several meals during the week (or even longer)!

Interesting to see so many different ideas for stews!

So now I understand 'stew' is not the same we call in Dutch 'stamppot'. Stamppot is made of only potatoes and vegetables cooked together (with some salt) and then mashed.
The meat that goes with it is not cooked in the same pot. It can be baked, or made like those 'stews' mentioned here (but then only beef meat with onions and stock, called 'hachee' in Dutch). Vegetarians can have it with 'fake meat'...

Okay, this is not 'my favourite'. I often make something like this with any mixed vegetables I have (from my garden) together with potatoes. It's easy and cheap.

I will try your different stews to see which one is my favourite!

Deane Adams wrote:This may not be what Judith had in mind with this post, but yes I mend some of my clothes if using a Swing line "Tot" to staple a tear in a shirt sleeve counts.

I've also been known to make use of the always handy Duck Tape for some repairs too.

Anyway: it is still 'mending'. No matter how, it's better than throwing clothes away and buy new ones ...

I read here several of you keep pepper plants indoors over winter. What do you give those plants to stay strong???
I tried overwinter peppers and other plants many times, but every time they die because of attacs of aphids and other tiny creatures ...

Probably I have nothing to say to help you. My 'forest garden' exists of a few different fruit trees and berry bushes in my front and back yard. I called it my 'miniature permaculture food forest', but according to the 'rules' here it can not be called a 'food forest' because it is much too small.

There are no gophers or deer here, not even rabbits! The animals most seen in my garden are neighbours' house-cats, and because of the polyculture of mostly perannial plants covering the soil, they are no problem. (only problem: I wasn't able to grow catnip/cat mint, because the cats destroy it). Probably rats and mice do live here, but they hide. And there are all kinds of insects.

The gardens aren't large. Each one (both front and back) is about 8x8 meters. All fruit trees and bushes are planted by me. When we came to live here the back yard was all concrete tiles and the front yard mostly paved, with a narrow border. In 2014 I started studying permaculture to know how to make my garden 'lush and edible'. Most trees and berry bushes I planted in 2015.

In the front yard I applied permaculture design principles. The trees are all on one side so they will not shade other plants, but catch plenty of sunshine themselves. On the sunny side of the trees is a sort of 'herb spiral' with Mediterranean herbs. And there are raspberries (wherever they want to grow) and red currants. On the other side of the garden (shaded by a hedge) are the shade-loving plants and there's a tiny pond. In the middle of the garden is the rhubarb on a sort-of 'hugel'. That 'hugel' is also my 'rain garden', where all rain water from the roof 'flows' (it sinks in the sandy soil).

The back yard is a little chaotic. It was all sand (because there were tiles). During the years I did my best to add organic matter without buying it. Compost of kitchen scraps and fallen leaves is now the top layer. But still very sandy. And it's shady there too. In this time of year (winter) sun reaches only a corner in the back (if the sun isn't hidden by clouds).

But there is one apple tree, that started bearing apples two years ago. There's a cherry tree too, that gave two cherries last year (they taste good!) and there are blackberries and raspberries. The blackberry grows very well, I need to do a lot of pruning not to let it cover all of the garden!
In the most sunny corner there are strawberries and they do okay too.

Ryan M Miller wrote:I want to resurrect this thread again because I've been learning about other plants besides river cane that have straight shafts suitable for making knitting needles. Wherever river cane wasn't available, certain species of dogwood (Cornus sp.), Viburnum, and willow (Salix sp.) were used to make arrow shafts. I just recently found out about this as of yesterday. Here's a video of Willie Pekah from the Comanche of Oklahoma making traditional arrows with dogwood branches. I expect the same dogwood species he's using would also be suitable for making knitting needles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G1Vo9GV2H8

Thanks all here for the suggestions. Of course I do have plenty of knitting needles (I am a knitter for several decades). But I do like making 'prehistoric tools' of wood, bone, etc. In prehistory knitting was not yet invented, but plenty other stick-shaped tools are possible. Spindles for example.
I did collect a bunch of dogwood some time ago. I think there's still some left. Btw. dogwood (red dogwood,  Cornus sanguinea) was really used in prehistory, it was 'twine-woven' together to make fish traps. Artefacts from mesolithic/neolithic are found here in the Netherlands. I'll look for other trees/bushes with straight branches too.

I downloaded this book (a few years ago) and started reading it.
After finding out I do not need anything more than boiling hot water for cleaning away fat residues and lemon (or lime) peels for cleaning the sink and the taps ... I did not need anything more. Only some 'elbow grease' to get both my kitchen and my bathroom clean (or anyway: what I consider clean enough).

I experimented for some time with home-made laundry soap (solution of olive-oil-soap and soda in water). But that did not wash my laundry as clean as I wanted. Then I tried the 'soap nuts', but they did not wash clean enough either. So I returned to store-bought 'eco' laundry wash powder.

A few years ago I wrote a comment here and I said I wanted to make a tea cosy. Since then I really made a tea cosy. Only I did not make it in patchwork, but I knitted it.

Julia Winter wrote:I really like the garlic mullein oil for ears.  Oil is an excellent thing to put in an unhappy ear because it works in harmony with our ears' natural cleaning system.

The ears produce cerumen (ear wax) deep inside, near the eardrum.  This wax coats the inside of the ear and waterproofs it.  The movement of the jaw, with chewing and talking, will help the ear wax move along the ear canal out to the pinnae (the outer ear) where you can get it with your finger.  This is the design.  I don't recommend q-tips, or at least if you must make sure you are very careful because it's easy to shove cerumen deeper into the ear canal and make things worse.

Oil will help soften the cerumen so it can do its job, and resume moving towards the exit.  Sometimes a person has a major ball of wax in their ear, and then irrigation with warm water will often get it to come out.  I won't do irrigation on someone with a particularly painful ear, because duh, it hurts and also they might maybe have a ruptured ear drum and you don't want to squirt water at that.  If you put oil in your ear I recommend warming it up.  Putting the little bottle in a bowl of hot water works, carrying it in your front pocket also works, albeit more slowly.  

Some people, especially those of Asian descent, don't have sticky cerumen, they have dry flaky cerumen.  Oil is helpful for this sort of cerumen as well.

Rubbing alcohol is useful for drying out the ear - it displaces water and it dries easily.  Acid is helpful for preventing infections in the ear.  If a person is prone to swimmer's ear, they can instill drops made with half vinegar and half rubbing alcohol after getting the ears full of water (swimming, etc).  You do NOT want to use these drops to treat an ongoing otitis externa (infection in the ear canal) because it will HURT.  They are good for prevention.

If I have a patient who has trouble with their ear more than once, I recommend instilling sweet oil or garlic mullein oil into each ear canal weekly.  Let it really soak in, so you can only do one side at a time.

My right ear is more sensitive than the left ear. As a child I once had a major ear infection and then the right ear drum was damaged. Many years later a doctor confirmed that there was still a cicatrice.
When it's cold and I ride my bicycle I have to take care that my ears don't get cold, especially that right ear. But sometimes I can not prevent the cold and then the ear starts hurting.
BTW there's not a problem with ear wax, it is only hurting inside.

My remedy is: take a little ball of raw sheeps wool (with lanolin still in it) and put that in the ear. If I can not get wool with lanolin in it I take some fluffy threads of wool yarn and put a drop of olive oil on it, to put that in my ear. I keep the wool ball in my ear for as long as I feel it is needed. If that's more than one day I renew it (fresh wool, fresh oil).

Now I read here about garlic and mullein I will start making garlic oil (I think that's like calendula oil, but then with a clove of garlic instead of the flowers, isn't it?). And as soon as new mullein leaves are growing I will take some of those to make an infused oil of them too.

Thanks for the useful information.

Wow! Who would have thought that split peas could sprout?! Not me.
But you don't know until you have tried. I see here some who tried and succeeded. When these are 'permies' I trust them (more than google, youtube, etc.).

Now I want to try myself. Split peas are the easiest to get here, because they are the ingredient for the famous Dutch 'snert' (or 'erwtensoep', meaning 'pea soup').