Merry Christmas

Wishing you the best of the festive spirit

xx Anna

uses for lemons 007: cleaning food stains off plastic

Tomato stains on your expensive Tupperware? Trying to reuse those takeaway containers for leftovers but they still have laksa stains on them? Mix lemon juice with baking soda to make a paste and cover the stains. Leave them alone for a couple of hours and wash those stains away.

See more of LovePlantLife’s uses for lemons.

Uses for lemons 005: Ant Patrol

I bake a lot and I make lots of sweets and chocolate. I also live in an old house, on a sand dune, where ants like to feel at home.  So after any sugar-laden cooking session I need to clean up very well and I used to spend ages trying to get every last sugary morsel off the bench. I have since found an easier way.

Chop a lemon in half and wipe down the bench with it. The lemon juice interrupts those devilish ant sensors and they just don’t come a’callin.

See more of LovePlantLife’s uses for lemons.

Uses for lemons 004: Deodorant

Nasty things are reported to be found lurking in deodorant bottles-parabens, PEGs, hormone-disrupting fragrances and antibacterials, petrochemicals, aluminum compounds. So throw it out and use your lemons! Just slice one in half and rub it under those armpits. The antibacterial properties will keep you feeling lemony fresh.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

See more of LovePlantLife’s uses for lemons.

Uses for lemons 003: Cleaning raw eggs

Does your favourite salad dressing call for raw egg but you’re a bit angsty because of the salmonella risk? Lemon power will save the day. Add 20ml of lemon juice per egg, stir gently and refrigerate the mix for 48 hours. You can store this mix in the freezer for up to 3 months. When you are ready to use, thaw the eggs in the fridge overnight.

Image of a raw egg (after being soaked in vinegar for 48 hours) by Wikipedia user Biswarup Ganguly.

See more of LovePlantLife’s Uses for lemons.

Uses for lemons 001: Tequila

If you’ve got lemons, chances are you’ve got too many of them. I hate to see fruit go to waste, so here’s a handy guide on what to do with your crop. And I started with the most important one – if life gives you lemons, then crack out the tequila!

 

See more of LovePlantLife’s uses for lemons.

Millions spent on GE trials with huge risks & no gain

Despite a risk to the economy and an undisclosed cost to taxpayers, field trials of genetically engineered plants and trials on animals have resulted in next to no commercial gains by Crown institutes.

Glitchy

I’m trying to do something new and different and my software doesn’t like it and is spacking out at me. I’m in turn getting grumpy and spacking out at it. To my darling subscribers who may have got emails saying there are new posts, I apologise. In the meantime, here’s some pretty, courtesy of DesignZZZ.

The Myth of ‘Fully Self-Sufficient’

Many times I’ve heard people claim to want to be fully self-sufficient. With a dreamy look in the eye, they think how peaceful it would be, how simple life would be growing all your own food and living ‘off the land’.

Quite frankly, I think these people are mental. They don’t realise how much hard work, skill and organisation growing all your own food takes.

Toby Hemenway, American permaculture expert and author of the excellent Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, seems to agree and explains the myth and reality much better than I would.

I don’t think this mindset is reserved for permaculturalists and idealists. I see it in those entrepreneurial types who’ve battled through and made ‘their own way’, doing it ‘all by themselves’. They generally think everyone else should have to too. It’s incredibly myopic thinking. Usually said with a sense of pride, it simply shows that they’ve forgotten, or disregarded, all those who’ve helped them over the years. Getting things achieved, you simply can’t do everything yourself. Living is not done solo.

Thanks to Ours Not Mine for the heads up.

 

2010 blogging review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 10,000 times in 2010. That’s about 24 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 59 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 172 posts. There were 173 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 31mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was April 16th with 87 views. The most popular post that day was Buy seeds.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were google.co.nz, twitter.com, urbanevolution.org, seedysundaynz.blogspot.com, and google.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for emilia hazelip, arborsculpture, entrachyadids, synergistic gardening, and bottling cherry tomatoes.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Buy seeds April 2010
3 comments

2

Emilia Hazelip’s Synergistic Gardening July 2009
7 comments

3

Growing New Zealand Yams / Oca January 2010
3 comments

4

Auxins, geotropism & upside down tomatoes April 2009
2 comments