The lovely Joanie sent me a book called Dead Snails Leave No Trails for Christmas.
She’d introduced me to the natural pest control methods of Loren Nancarrow and his field notes, at which time I determined to purchase one or more of his books. She beat me to it.

As Joanie wrote so eloquently, and forgive me for paraphrasing:

It’s called conservation and stewardship of the earth. God made us stewards of the earth and the animals because we are “higher” functioning.
While I don’t believe in most “environmental” groups, I do believe that true environmentalists are those who look to minimize our impact on the natural world.
We ARE responsible for the land, the seas, the skies, and the animals that dwell on or in them all. It’s our duty. Too many have forgotten though.

I agree completely; I’m just not capable of saying it so well. I do try to steer clear of pesticides but sometimes it doesn’t seem possible.
Enter Loren and his wonderful publications chock full of wisdom.

Everything in the book is straightforward, commonsense stuff dispensed in an easy to read format. There’s an index, bibliography, glossary, pictures and pull quotes of salient phrases and tips.

I love his take on chameleons; they mesh so well with my own. We live in south Florida, so I welcome chameleons and house geckos inside. If I see them, I know there are insects in the house. If they disappear for awhile, then there aren’t. Simple.

Not simply a home and garden pesticide book, with this you can mix your own brew to keep stray dogs, cats, possums away from your yard and garden. I give it two thumbs up!

And thank you, Joanie. You are a wonderful friend. {{Hugs}}

Unless we win the lottery, our next home won’t have elevators, servants, a tankless water heater or even a two car garage.

Our next place will be where we live out our retirement, such as it may be. And that is just plain scary. It’s frightening for perennial teenagers to face such a life change. We’ll get through it because we have to… because there’s no choice. Within the next five years we’ll be moving, probably back to Texas.

What I’d like is a small place out in the middle of nowhere, but close enough to get into Houston within an hour. Or two. I don’t care if the house is small but I’d like some property around it so I won’t hear the neighbors flush their toilet.
I want a plot of soil to make a veggie garden. And some chickens. Who knew forty years ago that I’d actually want the things? LOL!

That’s it. Room to breathe, some serenity and a way to feed myself. Hey, I’m a simple girl and going back to my roots feels right somehow…

Though I would like a fireplace. I miss having -and using- a fireplace down here.

I recently became acquainted with the sugar ant. Not by choice, of course… and hopefully not for long. After being ant-less [without ant?] for so long the little beasties were almost a novelty. I put out the ant traps and waited for them to carry the sweet, sweet poison back to their queen. Bwaaahaaaahaaaa…

Then one morning I woke to find a veritable swarm of them in the kitchen. Warm and fuzzy aside, they had to go.

Since I don’t like squirting poison everywhere the avenues open to me were narrow, to say the least. Washing everything down with bleach is doable, but they still hang around waiting for us to spill stuff. And why aren’t the ant motels working? And where are my geckos?

Then I remembered something a gardener told me many years ago: Ants don’t like black pepper. Any ants. All ants. Put down a line of pepper and they dare not cross; it’s as secure as a UAW picket line.

It works, but it’s not as if you can sprinkle pepper on all your surfaces. I lined the perimeter of the counter and watched the circus as they searched for a way out. Mean, I know… but they shouldn’t be here in the first place.

Oh, they hate cloves, too.

Introducing the Gaping Maw, a high speed highway straight to Lucifer’s furnaces.
I’ve never cleaned an oven before. In.my.life. And I’m 51. It’s not like it’s on my bucket list, either. I avoided the unpleasant task in the past by moving quite a bit or having an enterprising roommate.

I’ve just lived in this house too long and finally had to clean the thing… and no lie, I found myself praying. Like the Almighty has time for a shiftless woman with an aversion to filthy ovens! I pled. I bargained, though I’ve learned that sometimes those turn out like dirty little tricks played on oneself. I tried to cry, but found the fumes from the oven cleaner had fused my tear ducts closed.

If I make it through this, I promise to stimulate the economy by hiring someone else to clean this damn thing from now on!

If I don’t make it out alive, I want my pearls to go to Amber.

The morning light streamed in through the window and lit up Bree’s butt and the chair. Awesome effect!

We’ve had one of those over night Arctic fronts blow in and the temperature is comfortably cool… the windows are thrown open and we just finished a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon and cinnamon rolls…. oh, my… the house smells so good!

Nothing pressing to do, nowhere we have to be… I just want this morning to last for about a month…