Winning the War in the Garden with My Homemade Arsenal

I am not known for my green thumb. In fact the hubby makes sounds like munchkins dying any time we pass a garden center. (Wait for it. There ya go.)

But I did feel obligated to keep other people's green investments alive if I somehow got to be the caretaker of a live, green backyard. In college we had a grapevine in a '40s era house some college friends and I rented. The gorgeous, sprawling vine began to wither soon after we moved in. I snipped off a few leaves and took it to the poor garden go-to guy at the local nursery who didn't run when I came walking in every few weeks with a new problem (or victim, as the hubby likes to call them).

We had bugs on the grapevine, lots of skeletal caterpillars, called such because they left just a skeleton of the leaves, killing the healthy plant.

I was really granola in college, so I found this easy organic bug spray recipe and tweaked it a bit. Sure enough, within days those little buggers had retreated.

Forward 20 years. We have some sort of invisible bug decimating our porch garden, as far as I can tell in the moments I spend going in and out of the front door with the twins in tow. So I whipped up this recipe for organic bug spray that wouldn't get on the kids as they brushed by our tomatoes, Meyer lemon tree and various vines and scented geraniums I have somehow kept alive in the six months since we've moved back to our little house.

Here you go! Use in good faith. It smells horrible, but only hurts tiny white flies and other vegetarians of the insect kind.

Kim's Knock Out Organic Insectisider

1 part chopped garlic to 4 parts mineral oil (I use tablespoons, but you can make a giant batch if you wish).

Let sit overnight in the fridge.

Strain the following morning. Fill a 16-ounce water bottle with tap water and a teaspoon of dish soap. Add the garlic mixture and shake to blend. Keep on the counter for up to one week.

Tip: Mark the bottle well. It will stink to high heaven and you will never be able to use it for anything else again.

After three days of spraying in the morning before watering (let sit for at least 30 minutes), the little vines are doing very well!

One Trip Too Many + Too Much Tulle = Inspiration

Their cheery disposition was ticking me off each time I stumbled over their many jolly faces staring up from the floor of the twins’ room.

All those stuffed animals, Barbies and other smiling, friendly faces were becoming a hazard to our vertical health.

I had bought some tulle when the hubby and I made a trip to Hancock fabrics recently. (Love that place!) I had planned to make a mermaid costume for Morgan, but this tulle was too blue so it languished in my sewing machine box for a few weeks, getting in my way when I went to hem the dining room curtains or fish out the seam ripper to redo her tiny dress straps, again.

Inspiration hit and, 

one no-sew five-minute project later, I’d solved two problems with three little items we had lying around the house.

I put up those sticky hooks that get all that commercial play during the holidays. (They really do work quite well, particularly if you like to move things around on a regular basis as I tend to do.)

 

I then put up the tulle and wrapped rubber bands around the prongs of the hooks and the tulle.

Then I put a happy little bow over each hook to hide the rubber bands.

Now Mickey, Mini and Hippo can host all the other orphaned animals from the bedroom floor for late night tea parties and what not, and I can walk safely in their room without tripping over a furry friend in the middle of the night!

One of those days in under three hours

Sunday morning, I had just come in from taking the clothes off the backyard line, my head ringing from hitting the glass hummingbird feeder full of sticky homemade feed, (every time). Phone rings.

It's Serene Sunday School Lady. She calmly tells me Jack is needing a little extra help today and could someone come get him, sooner than later.

My response?

"Is that him?!" Some child, apparently mine, is wailing and screeching in the background.

Serene Sunday School Lady: (Long pause) "Yes."

I can tell we've pushed her well past her serene point.

I text my mother, who has taken the twins to the early Sunday School, and jump in the car, hair dripping wet and slightly sticky.

We make attempts, Serene Sunday School Lady and I, to return Jack to his happy, chair-sitting self. To no avail.

Pull his happily seated twin sister out of Sunday School, skip the sermon, have a long, calm talk with Jack about listening and not throwing fits on the way home. He's very happy to be going home. Morgan tells me if I had listened in the first place he could have gone home, fit-free. Oy.

We get home, breeze in because Sunday is my day with the girls at promptly 11:30 a.m. Hubby is waiting at the door, hands on hips, parental glare firmly in place. Asks Jack why the fits again. Little guy! He apologizes, sits on his bed, no fun to be had for hours, or, in adult time, 4 minutes.

I go to the master bedroom, Morgan in tow asking why tattling is bad, and stick my head under the faucet. I'm explaining the intricacies of why snitches get stitches when the hubby comes into the room.

"I can't begin to know what to even ask at this point, but why?"

"Hummingbird food. In my hair."

"You're like some Charlie Chaplin character, I want to tell you to watch out for the rake before you step on it."