Do-It-Yourself Flea Spray For Carpet

As I mentioned in my last post, we found some baby kittens in our backyard and decided to take them in for a chance at life (it was over a hundred degrees outside, so leaving them outside was not an option, even if I wasn’t afraid of what my dog would do). We soon noticed that two of them were absolutely infested with fleas! It was bad – if you picked up the kitten and moved the fur near its neck, swarms of fleas would come out and crawl all over his face, all over the nose and eyes. I’d never seen such an infestation, and worried that they would move on from the kittens to our carpet.

A quick online search informed me that for every flea I could see there was even more larvae and eggs – yikes! So besides bathing the kittens, I would have to remove the eggs that most likely had fallen off them. This part was easy – I’ve been vacuuming religiously twice a day. I also learned that I should make something to repell the fleas, to keep them from wanting to set up home on the carpet.

I surveyed different options online – from mainsteam chemical and store bought (not an option), to diatomaceous earth, and lavender tea –  and decided on making a lemon water. Apparently, the oils in the lemon peels are unpleasant to the fleas, but not toxic for the cats.

To start with, I halved some lemons and made myself some lemonade, saving all the peels. Then I filled a medium pot with purified water, added the peels, and boiled them for about two hours.

Then  l strained the liquid, and let it cool off.

Lastly, I poured the cooled liquid into a bottle with a spray nozzle (we’d saved it and washed it out really well).

I’ve been refridgerating it, just in case, but I pull it out and spray the carpet until it feels damp. At first I was doing this twice a day, and vacuuming normally, but now I’m just doing it once every other day.  It’s been weeks now and no flea infestation without needing to use harsh chemicals!

As for the bathing part, I find it quite alarming that I keep seeing blue Dawn soap getting recommended as a way to get rid of fleas. While it may be less harsh than using a localized insecticide, blue Dawn soap contains artificial color (obviously) and fragrance, and it may still irritate the kittens’ skin (we don’t even keep that stuff around for human use).

We used Dr. Bronner’s castille soap, just a little squirt of it into the water, and it was very effective. We would dip in the kitten’s body, being sure to keep the head above water, then pull it back out and all the fleas would be stunned. Then we removed them with tweezers and put them in a separate dish with soapy water. Once they all migrated to the head, they were much easier to catch. When done we just flushed all of the fleas down the toilet, and good bye flea infestation!

Summertime (attempts at) Gardening

So, I missed my last monthly update for my A Year In My Garden series, and I’m going to make this a 2-in-1 for July and August.

View of the garden from indoors

Anyway, gardening is going… not so well for me these last couple of months. One problem has been the heat – practically all of July we’ve been having ridiculous three digit weather. Many of my plants, despite being watered daily, are not liking it very much. Some look dried up, though I continue to water in hopes that the roots remain alive and they’ll spring back up (like my mint, arnica, and sage). My watermelon plants are enjoying the heat, it seems, but the one and only watermelon I have spotted was either picked off by the birds or fell off on its own.

A tiny watermelon! I managed to get a picture the day before it fell/was picked off

The birds, of course, continue to eat everything they can get their beaks on. Strawberries don’t last past the point of being semi-ripe before they disappear. I’ve been able to salvage a few tomatoes here and there, but they eat those as well. Even more annoying, they seem to be eating the plant itself, the flowers and such. As for my blackberry bush (which supposedly likes full sun and is in season in early summer), after the initial three or so flowers (which became blackberries and then dried up before they ripened) there was nothing more. The bush continues to grow, just no fruit. At least caterpillar season appears to have ended, and the collard greens are finally growing strong.

A praying mantis that hung out on our screen door for a couple days

The partial shade canopy I’d made from old orange sacks has not been withstanding the strong summer sun. While I’m sure it did provide some much needed shade to my plats during early summer, at some point it began to tear and now hangs in tatters. Obviously I will need to re-do for next summer. since we go through a 25 pound sack of oranges in about two weeks, I’ve been saving the sacks to use next year.

But the biggest problem of all has been the bugs – specifically flying bugs like junebugs. I wrote in a previous post ( which you can find at http://www.naturallyhealthyfitandfrugal.wordpress.com/2016/04/07/im-a-terrible-gardener/  if you would like to take a look) about my longtime phobia of flying, loudly buzzing insects (not honeybees, I love bees!). The neighbors have a fig tree which they don’t bother picking, so these disgusting flying beetles congregate there and swarm all over our yard. Since I’m terrified of them, this limits my gardening time severely. All I have time for is to go outside and water the plants – weeding, pruning, and planting will have to wait until those bugs leave. Which if this year is anything like last year, it should be at the end of August.

Although the neighbor’s tree being infested with bugs is a temporary problem (we’re renting, and considering moving or purchasing some land in the future), I do acknowledge that these bugs are a permanent – if seasonal – issue. The lack of advice or resources for someone who wants to garden but is desperately afraid of some bugs is very discouraging (as I mentioned in my last post of the topic, the advice consists of ‘grow up!’). I wish more people understood how deep of a phobia it is, and came up with some better solutions. Like how to build your own bug suit (like a beekeeper suit) out of old winter clothes or something…

Anyway, even though plantwise I don’t have anything new to report on my backyard, I did find something unexpected – baby kittens! The same irresponsible neighbors with the unpicked tree also allow their cat(s?) to roam free and one day my dogs were raising a commotion outside, I looked out, and saw a tiny baby kitten struggling to walk. I rushed out (my maternal instict overrode my fear of stepping out temporarily) and brought it inside. I could hear more sad little meows coming from outside, but had no idea what to do. About an hour later, I see my dog with a kitten in her mouth and I rushed out again to get it. When Boyfriend got home, he went out and was able to find a third. almost two weeks later, a fourth kitten was found and added.

Baby kittens on their first day found

So, we’ve been nursing them, estimating their age when we found them at somewhere between 1 and 2 weeks. A website called Alley Cat was very helpful during the first week or so, but unfortunately it seems to have gotten a revamp and all the helpful info is no longer there (now it seems they’re just interested in fundraising and activism, but as of three weeks ago they had something called Kitten Progression that explained how a kitten grows, week by week, and how to socialize a feral kitten).

Mudgey watches a tiny kitten explore

Recycling, Reusing, And Learning To Refuse

Putting the cardboard baskets, boxes, and plastic baskets in a reusable grocey bag, so I won’t forget them at home this time…

For years now, I’ve been recycling the containers that berries and strawberries are sold in at the farmer’s market, by returning them back to them once I’ve accumulated a good stack. However, this latest batch has been taking up space in my pantry for much too long, given that I no longer evn bring them home. A couple of months ago I discovered that I could just bring all the berries – about 16 little basket-fuls – home in a “reusable” bag, lined with an also reused “single-use” bag. I wash, dry and put them away immediately anyway. The berries, I mean; the bags I clean and air dry if wet so they can be ready for the next grocery trip.

That switch – from bringing the berries home in baskets that I’d need to return to the farmers to cutting out the baskets all the way – seems like an obvious one. But, I have to admit, it’s one that was not so easy for me to do. Now that local county/city ordinances have banned “single-use” plastic bags, suddenly it’s not a huge deal if I bring my own bags to a store. But, if I want to use a reusable container for anything else, people still look at me like I have two heads. It’s quite annoying – so if by law you have to bring one it’s “normal”, but if you choose to do that on your own anyway it’s not? Ok…

I am a quiet and shy person for the most part, definitely not what someone would call assertive. When extra attention is drawn to me I feel terrified. Speaking up can be incredibly difficult.  So, logically, doing things like insisting that a store weigh my empty glass jars so I can buy bulk items as other bloggers have suggested are not things I look forward to (and, as of yet, haven’t done. I just reuse the same bag. And I don’t think I’d want broken glass all over the inside of my trunk gatting mixed with the food either). At the farmer’s market, I take my own plastic bags to put fruits and vegetables in. Even though I have been doing this for years, they still offer me a bag every time as I pull mine out. I’ve noticed that a few other regular customers have started to do that too, so perhaps it will become a “thing”.

It hasn’t all been good experiences, of course. One time when I pulled out my stash of obviously previously-used bags to bag some groceries, the lady at the stand made a comment, something like “Imagine how guilty her (referring to me) conscience must be!” How rude, right? I mean yes, I do feel guilty for my not-so-sustainable ways back before I got with the program, so I make up for it with my actions now. But for her to say that about a paying customer to thir face (in a different language) was uncalled for. Yes, I still shop at their stand; their swiss chard has the brightest colored stalks I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, I would like to move towards either becoming more comfortable myself of making somewhat unreasonable requests in the quest for reducing waste, or it becoming more of “the norm” for people to reuse bags and containers while grocery shopping.

Summertime Gardening: Hot, Hot, Hot

7th installment of my A Year In  My Garden series

By now my homemade canopy is really showing signs of wear and tear

Summer is (finally) here, as well as summertime weather. The last four days have had record triple-digit temperatures – and I’m not just talking 100, but more like 105-111 degrees. It’s been hard on humans, animals, and plants alike – but at least us humans can get up and get a drink of water or sit in the shade.

The  main challenge has been keeping my plants hydrated (because I garden in containers, so there’s no underground source of water). When it’s this hot and dry, even if I water in the morning, by mid afternoon the plants are already looking droopy.  And that’s even if I give them a very thorough watering, not just spraying in their direction with the hose (which I usually don’t do, because I know the roots need the water, not the leaves; if anything, some leaves are damaged by being wet and then heated by the sun). I’ve timed myself and it takes me at least 15 minutes to do a careful watering job, which means sometimes I don’t have time to water in the morning. Unfortunately, when it’s super hot I need to water early, so that’s going to take some planning and schedule rearranging.

Droopy chard, and other not-so-happy plants in the middle of a hot day

 

 

Now that it’s turned hot, my watermelon plants – the ones I planted from seed last March – are finally showing signs of life. I’m a little irritated that the seed pack said that I could plant that early in my region if there was absolutely no growth for all these months – wouldn’t I have been better off waiting until around early May to plant?  Either way, there’s flowers but no watermelons yet.

The very slow-to-grow watermelon plants

My squash plants were not able to tolerate the heat, even with regular watering. I’m continuing to water just in case they are still alive at the roots, but since none of them really thrived I don’t know if they’re done.

My collard green plants also decided to finally start growing. Unfortunately, as soon as they started growing they immediately started showing signs of infestation – tiny, bite marks and holes. I gave them a quick inspection, but didn’t see any of the caterpillars that devour my basil, so I continued puzzling over what could be eating my plants. It wasn’t until a more detailed check that I found tiny, microscopic worms or caterpillars. These were about a tenth the size of the regular caterpillars, small enough that a single leaf had dozens on it. Well, now that I know the problem, I quickly removed them all and checked the plants leaf by leaf.

My poor, chewed-up collard greens

My blackberry bush is flowering, and now has a few blackberries ripening on it. Hopefully it’ll be less of a challenge to enjoy them, compared to how quickly the birds have been snatching up the strawberries. I think in the last few months I’ve only gotten to enjoy one or two fully ripe strawberries – the rest are gone bfore that point. Luckily, for the most part the birds have left my tomatoes alone – with a few exceptions (like the hollowed-out tomato pictured below. Not to worry, I managed to use what was left when making tomato sauce).

I’m still composting, though my first attempts at composting didn’t go so well – I’ve previously mentioned how some berry-looking things landed in the compost and then started sprouting in all my plants. I’ll be honest, I’m a bit discouraged about composting. However, since we have so much compostable waste all the time – stems from chard, spinach, and kale; carrot greens; pulp from the juicer; etc – I feel like it’s wrong to throw it away, so I continue my composting project. I figure, even if the results don’t actually help me grow bigger, stronger, healthier plants, I’m returning stuff to the earth and keeping it from festering inside a plastic bag in a landfill. I mean, I’m still pretty heated up – no pun intended – that the gardeners that take care of the property (we rent an apartment) throw all the gardening waste – leaves, cut grass, shedding bark from eucalyptus trees – into the dumpster. I’ll say it once again:, recycling options – and hence, the ability to do the right thing by your morals – need to be available to ALL people, not just those who “own” their home. Just another form of discrimination, in my opinion.

And now, some more assorted garden pictures!

Let’s Talk Salt

At school  I heard something rather concerning “You NEED salt – if you’re one of those ‘fanatics’ who don’t eat salt, you’ll die”. Seeing as I’m one of those fanatics – her word, not mine – and I’m still alive and kicking, I needed to do some research and write a lil’ post about this. (And, by the way, it is horrible that a person in authority – the teacher – would make such a misleading statement, but it wasn’t the only one she made this semester.)

Do humans need salt to live, or sodium?

Humans need sodium (as well as other minerals and “salts”, but as far as this post I’m focusing on what most people know as salt: NaCl, or sodium chloride). Though it wasn’t easy finding out recommended daily sodium intake, some figures I found are 250mg-500mg per day (on the higher side if you sweat more due to climate or activity level) (1). American Heart Association says as high as 1500mg won’t affect you negatively.  However, the average person on the Standard American Diet (SAD) is consuming around 3400 mg (!) of salt per day, clearly too much (1).

Most of this sodium comes from processed food, so the majority of the articles I found dealt with whether or not it’s necessary to add table salt to your food. However, since they are assuming that one is eating processed junk, to find out how to get my daily sodium I had to do a bit more deductive research. The question remained, as a person who eats ONLY unprocessed food cooked at home, am I getting an adequate amount of sodium?

I needed to find natural sources of sodium, vegetables or fruits which contain high enough amounts of sodium so that when combined they will meet my daily needs. This was a bit of a challenge because fruits and veggies are usually advertised as being low in sodium, and a search on ‘what vegetables are high in sodium’ turned up nothing (because high in sodium is considered hundreds or thousands of mg per serving, and here I am looking for which have more than like 10mg).

Anyway, my persistence paid off. Here is a short list of the most sodium rich vegetables I was able to find (2):

-spinach: 160 mg per 86g

-swiss chard: 150 mg per 72g

– celery: 115 mg per 110 g

– broccoli: 80 mg per 148g

– beets: 65 mg per 82g

-carrot: 60 mg per 78g

-cauliflower: 30mg per 99g

As you can see, if you keep a varied diet high in vegetables it is not too hard to get your 250-500 mg per day, or even higher if you live in a dry climate or are athletic.

I sincerely hope no one reading this decides to cut out these vegetables because of their sodium content and them prefering to eat processed food (I only say this because years and years ago when I used to eat only junk I would not eat much fruit because of the calories, so I could still eat my sugary high-calorie junk – yes, I was stupid)

But why not just use salt, especially if you don’t eat processed food?

Here are my personal reasons, and in the end everyone has to make the decision for themselves. I won’t touch the cheap stuff  (like Mortons or store brand stuff) because it often has extra ingredients besides the actual salt, like anticaking (cellulose, who knows from what source) and dextrose (which is sugar, also from who knows what source). Why there is sugar in salt, who knows. I’ve seen these extra ingrediens even in the stuff claimed to be “sea salt”. Then there’s the part about how the salt was bleached to achieve it’s white color. If only for the deceptive marketing (how the extra ingredients are not mentioned anywhere but the nutrition label tucked out of sight) I would refuse to give any business to these companies.

As for higher quality stuff, like pink himalayan salt or RealSalt, I’ll admit I’ve used these before. I think we even have an open container of himalayan salt in the pantry right now. One reason I don’t use it regularly is because by this point our taste buds are so sensitive (due to not eating processed food) that I don’t even feel the food needs it, we just enjoy its real flavors. Also, whether it’s in my head of not, I feel quite bloated when I eat anything with salt, so I’d rather just avoid it.

Another reason – and I’m hesitant to use this one, because other than the time I read about it years ago I haven’t done any more research on it – is that according to an article I read, the freed glutamic acid (from denatured (cooked) protein) will combine with the excess sodium to form the compound monosodium glutamate (MSG). Like I said, I haven’t had an opportunity to look for the article again and see if the research is there, but given that I don’t really feel the need to add salt anyway this is the way we’ve been doing it.

What about iodine?

This is another issue that I’ve heard brought up whenever someone claims to eat a low-salt diet. I’ve even heard people say that eating himalayan salt or other less processed salt is bad for you because it is not iodized, that you should eat the cheap stuff. This is ridiculous! Yes, our bodies need iodine, but there are other sources, such as dried seaweed (nori) or kelp, which can be bought as dry powder and added to smoothies. It is simply unnecessary to eat the iodized salt with sugar and cellulose and who knows what else.

Sources

1  healthyeating.sfgate.com/can-live-salt-consumption-3542.html

2 http://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org/vegetable-nutrition-database

Spam

No, this is not about that excuse-for-food processed canned nastiness, though if I have to say something about that I would say “Don’t eat it!”

This is about the other kind of spam, internet spam. Specifically, what is up with the odd websites that supposedly are referring viewers to this blog? Things like “free-video-tool.com” or “keywords-monitoring-your-success.com” or “fix-website-errors.com” – seriously, what’s up with this? A vast majority of my views are being “referred” from these websites, which does not happen with my other blog. Are they scoping it out to see if this url actually gets any traffic? Are they insinuating that my website has “errors”? Are they trying to sell me something? I’ve tried clicking on the links but I worry that they are the kind of websites where you can pick up some computer viruses, which is something I definitely don’t need right now. I would’ve guessed it’s always the same person, but the views according to my stats page are from different countries all over the world, so I’m just confused.

If anyone has any idea what these websites do, or has an abnormally percentage of their views generated from these websites, please fill me in on what’s the deal here (if you happen to know)!

Anyway, I wasn’t even planning on writing about this, but here I am with finally some free time to write about important issues and WordPress decides to be extra glitchy and slow in the loading times, not letting me access any of my incomplete drafts.  Pretty annoying – WordPress, if you weren’t free I would be so done with you!

Fresh-Squeezed, Homemade Juice Does NOT Equal Soda!

Reading over the title, it seems so glaringly obvious to me that I can’t believe it even has to be stated – I can’t believe this needs a blog post to address. However, recently a blogger I respect made this claim and I have to add my two cents…

Her argument was… it’s all sugar! If you separate the fiber from the juice in fruit, all you’re left with is sugar (I guess they forgot about the nutrients?) What I have to say to that is, yes, there is a lot of sugar left over when the fiber is taken out. But a high content of sugar alone does not soda make. I quit drinking soda years ago, but last time I checked soda had artificial color, “natural flavor” (hidden source of msg), caramel color (can’t bother to find the source, but I remember reading it was a carcinogen), preservatives, carbonation, high fructose corn syrup (GMOs), etc. That is definitely not just fruit with the fiber squeezed out!

(I’d like to clarify that I’m only referring to juice that is made at home from fresh fruit, not any of those supposedly “natural” or “fresh” juices out on the market that are made by the same corporations that make soda, and mysteriously taste the same, despite the fact that no two fruits taste the same, let alone thousands…)

When I first began my lifestyle change, juice was one of the things that helped me.I would have a tall glass of fresh-squeezed juice as a meal replacement and it would give me loads of energy, which I need for my busy day. (Homemade, fresh-squeezed) juice is an excellent alternative when there is a limited amount of time to eat – because who has time to eat the equivalent number of fruit if you have a short time to eat? In my view, anything that gets people off their “energy drink” addiction is a good thing! If I was just starting out on my whole foods adventure, reading such conflicting statements as “Don’t drink juice, may as well have a Coke!” are very misleading. If I hadn’t read so many useful post from this blogger before I would have sworn she was trying to sabotage people…

In conclusion, sugar is not the enemy. Weird lab-created chemicals, preservatives, MSG (in the form of “natural flavor”), GMOs, artificial colors, and the like are things that are much more concerning.

(Another note: juice should be drank as soon as possible, to prevent it from oxidizing excessively. The longer it sits out making contact with the air, the more it oxidizes. Fruit takes longer to oxidize (but if you’ve bitten into an organic apple you’ll see how it starts to turn brown if left out), but once it’s juiced the surface area increases, making the oxidation happen quicker. Seal in an airtight container if it’s for later consumption.)

(Ok, one more note: If you drink juice made at home and packaged in your own reusable container, you also help save the envoronment. Even though soda cans are technically recyclable, the gas to drive to the recycling center, the bag you put the cans in, the resources spent in operating the recycling plant (and trasporting the recyclables overseas where many of the plants are located…)  are little things that would be avoided. Every little bit helps!)

Ok, I’ll shut up (for now).

Springtime Gardening – Weeding, Harvesting, And Baby Birds

Next installment of my A Year In My Garden Series…

Some of my tomato plants, and a nice cluster of heirloom pear tomatoes

First off, wordpress decided to glitch and not save anything I’d written. Luckily, I took a screenshot, so if you’re curious how this post originally started off, click on the picture below.

How the post originally started off…

Anyway…

The baby birds hatched then much too quickly grew up and moved on. It seems so silent now without their early morning chirping right outside the door. It’s silly, but I feel like I miss my little bird family. Although all of the apartments in our complex have the same lighting fixtures, as far as I’ve checked ours was the only one with a nest. So I feel like in a way the birds chose us… or it was just random luck (which I don’t believe in). Anyway, before the birds learned to fly and went on in their lives, I managed to take this picture from inside our door.

In the crack above the metal door, the baby bird’s head can barely be seen

And now, for assorted garden pictures from this month:

Some more:

As you can see, my cilantro plants have flowered, my collard greens finally actually resemble collard greens, and my blackberry bush has started to produce blackberries.

Also, a few pictures of the problematic grass I mentioned earlier. Here’s some blades that I picked off (left), and some still growing in the pot of this tomato plant (right; taken right before I picked them off).

“What Do You Eat So You Don’t Get Sick?”

Nature’s original combo special: apricots, blueberries, cherries, loquats, and strawberries

That was the question posed to me today by a friend from school. She’d mentioned that she thought she was catching a cold and I’d told her that even though I may get mild cold symptoms – sore throat, sneezing – they rarely last longer than a day and are quite infrequent. She knows I eat “healthy”, but has no idea to what extent. (It’s not the kind of thing I mention to people in detail – whenever I have in the past, the only thing I’ve gotten in result is alienation. Apparently it’s “cool” to claim you eat healthy only if it involves buying prepackaged food from Trader Joes or something – but if you insist on making all your food from scratch you’re an outcast. Ahh, herd mentality…)

Yet, I strongly believe that it is because of my diet that my immune system is in tip-top shape. It’s not a “genetic” thing; Growing up – and up until my lifestyle change – I caught colds just as often as anyone else, maybe more. I think it was at least once per month and they lasted for 10-14 days. Not only that, the symptoms were quite delibilating, with me being bed-ridden with headaches, going through an entire roll of toilet paper to blow my both stuffy and runny nose, body aches, etc. Life was not fun back then…

So yes, I told her that I eat plenty of  fruit and fresh vegetables, including lots of dark leafy greens (just in case she thought by vegetables I meant potatoes or something). But then, I told her what I believe is truly the key to the puzzle, “It’s not just what I eat, it’s what I don’t eat.” Cue the confused look.

I mean, I can get all the greens I want into me, but if I truly want to be healthy I have to stop introducing toxic substances to my body. To me this sounds like common sense – it’s like if you have a bucket of sand with a hole in the bottom, and you keep filling it up only for it to never be full. Just like that, even if you are eating your veggies, if you are constantly filling up your body with toxic fast “food” that stresses your immune system it’ll be an uphill battle. (Of course, that would then lead to the topic of ‘if it’s toxic, why is it sold as food?’ which opens up a whole new can of worms, one I didn’t wish to get into (I hate being the bearer of bad news, and news don’t get any worse than ‘you have to completely revolutionize the way you eat’). Which explains why I’m writing about it here instead…

P.S. It’s really annoying how often the only times you hear about nutrition and deficiency/toxicity is when someone is trying to sell something, like supplements. Actually, no, it’s quite sad. Crap fast food and junk get commercials, supplements get ads in “health magazines” and fresh vegetables get… nothing. So if you found yourself on this blog, hopefully you’ll do some research and find what works for you.

 

Springtime Gardening – The Birds And The Bees

See the baby praying mantis on the bottom of the top leaf on the left side?

(My latest installment in my A Year In My Garden series)

So, the birds and the bees – or, how to save your crops from getting eaten by birds, while still keeping them accessible to the bees and other pollinating insects. Now, don’t get me wrong – I love birds, love waking up to their chirping up in the trees, and find myself captivated while watching the hummingbird(s) flutter around the backyard. There’s even a nest that a bird has built by one of the outdoor lamps right by our front door. I love my miniature ecosystem!

The nest. Every time we come home the bird comes flying out.

But it keeps happening that I have waited for my strawberries to fully ripen, only to come out and find them missing. If you’ve been following/reading this blog, you’ll remember that first I suspected that it was my dog eating the berries, so I moved them up high out of her reach. When they still went missing, I made a partial-sun shade out of old orange sacks (a fun do-it-yourself project, and a great way to reuse/recycle these sacks), not only to block out excessive midday sun from my more sensitive plants, but also to hopefully make the ripe strawberries harder to detect. And it worked, for about a month. Unfortunately, at some point the birds found them again.

So then, I tried using more old orange sacks to cover not only from the top, but from the sides as well. I had thought for sure this would work. But no, since setting it up last week even more starwberries have gone missing. I’m actually feeling quite frustrated and overhwhelmed, because I don’t want to put all my energy into this just so that the local wildlife can steal it. I mean, I could just seal up the sacks so they make a completely enclosed perimeter/cage around the strawberry plants, but then how will pollinators get in – or out?

…

My tomatoes are starting to ripen, and I’m starting to get concerned about what to do to protect them from predators. I still haven’t made a scarecrow, so that may be next. My dog has proven to be absolutely useless when it comes to protecting the garden from birds.

Other things that have been troublesome…let’s see… my kale plant isn’t doing too well. It’s not dying, but it’s not thriving either, just kind of existing there, struggling along. When I got it at the farmer’s market the guy told me to make sure to water it plenty, and I  have, but other than that I don’t know what it needs to grow. The chard plant I picked up from them is growing beautifully, as is the chamomille plant, so I’m not quite blaming them. Maybe it’s my thumb that’s not green enough.

My watermelon plants have also been sluggish to grow. No idea why (I followed the planting directions), but there’s still time for watermelon season. This is my first time growing them from seed, but I did have a watermelon plant a couple years ago that produced fruit, so the issue is not that I’m container gardening. I’ll continue to give them time – and of course, water and sunlight.

The now-two-month-old watermelon plants

Other than that, the garden is doin’ just lovely! My jalapeno plant already has about 5 little peppers coming along, some almost full size. My squash plants have started to flower, so that means either yummy flowers or squash to eat – either way, yay! The cilantro I planted is fully grown, and I’ve been using it in my cooking, and there’s also a vast assortment of basil plants.  My oldest aloe is in full bloom, which I love (this is the second year it blooms and I’ve had it for 5 years).

Oh, and for indoors, I picked up at the farmer’s market this plant, called a madagascar ice plant. Supposedly it has SSRI properties (so, an antidepressant) in the leaves if you chew them, at least according to the guy who sold it to me (internet research on that has hit a dead end, but then I’ve never been good at finding stuff without accidentally stumbling upon it). No, I haven’t tried it yet – for now it’s purely ornamental, and helps to purify the air.

The madagascar ice plant, supposedly with medicinal (SSRI) properties

Let’s see what this month brings to my garden.