How to Naturally Kill Weeds

We have lots of weeds in our garden(s) that I weed and try to keep up with. This is enough work but we also have weeds along (and in) our rock driveway. (It's not gravel, it's rocks we've hauled out of the basement). This is more weeding than I can handle but it looks really bad and needs to get done. Plus, the weeds in the garden are tall and easy to pull, the driveway ones are short without much to hold on to. After poking around online, I have come up with several ways to kill weeds.

• Bleach in a spray bottle. This is chemicals (not what we want to use) but supposedly, they disperse and go away in 2 days or less. This is very strong and will kill anything that gets sprayed (which includes plants you may not want killed, in which case they say you can just wipe it off of those). 
• Vinegar. It's recommended to do half vinegar, half water. The stronger the vinegar, the better. You can even use the leftover pickle juice. 
• Boiling water. Rather than boil water solely for weed killing, use the leftover water after boiling pasta or whatever else you boil.
• Salt. Any salt works like table salt, pool salt, and rock salt (used for melting ice). Again, be careful where this falls as it will kill whatever it touches.
• Newspaper. This prevents the weeds from getting the sun and growing. This will kill them.
• Any combination of above. There are a lot of recipes combining vinegar, salt, and a squirt of dish soap in a spray bottle. This is the method we are going to try on our weeds. I'l let you know how it goes.

I can't wait to get rid of these weeds!


Edit: We did try that last option this weekend to get rid of weeds. It works really well, especially on the shorter weeds but you have to make sure you spray a lot on them. It also helps if you have the sun out to help dry them out as well. What we didn't realize (but should have) is that yes this kills weeds, but you still have to pull them out. At least it gives you more time to weed, especially something as big as our driveway, before they start choking out the other plants (the ones you want to keep). So, it would probably work best if you were trying to weed between sidewalk cracks to brickwork. This way, you don't have to pull them out and you can just scrape them. 

Meal Ideas With No Oven

Summer is hot and humid here, especially since we don't have air conditioning. We avoid using the oven, pretty much at all costs during these months. Sometimes even the stove top can be too warm so some of the following ideas are even sans stove, but some aren't. All are fast and easy so even if you do use the stove, it'll be over soon.

• Wraps, sandwiches, and pitas. Think egg salad, tuna salad, chicken salad, grilled cheese, scrambled eggs with beans and veggies, deli meat sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly, etc. The ideas are really endless. Anything with eggs or beans would be great. If you're trying to be healthier, you can even use lettuce wraps or sushi wraps instead of bread.
• Gazpacho and other cold soups like blueberry soup, cucumber soup, tomato summer vegetable soup or just make up your own! 
• Salads. Greek, Caesar, Waldorf. Again, endless possibilities. Use whatever vegetables you have on hand, even if that doesn't include lettuce and you'll be able to make something tasty. Even something like cowboy caviar would be good.
• Cold pasta salads. I think this is different enough from regular salads for its own category. I recommend making these ahead of time so they can chill in the fridge. 
• Grill out. Your grill is outside and not bringing heat into your house. Of course, then the food is hot which might not be what you're looking for. But here you can really grill anything.
• Appetizers or filling snacks like crackers with meat and cheese, apples and peanut butter, chips and dips (black bean, guac, salsa, spinach and artichoke), deviled eggs, cream cheese stuffed peppers, parfaits, etc.

I hope this list can help generate some ideas of your own for when  your house is too hot to bake anything.

P.S. This is my 100th post! Isn't that exciting?  

Strawberries!

We finally got around to weeding our fruits after being gone a week (boy was it a lot of work, and I'm still not even done!). This was when we noticed that our strawberry plants have strawberries on them! Some of them were rotted (because we missed them---I didn't know they came this early), I got to eat about 10 of them (the ones that were ready for picking, obviously) and we still have a whole bunch that we are just waiting to get redder! This is our first successful thing we have ever planted and had grown. Last year, we haphazardly tried to plant potatoes (we did it way too late, never watered them, never weeded them) and we got teeny tiny spuds (that we didn't even end up eating). This year is hopefully going to be different. Our blueberries aren't supposed to get fruit until next year (we've been picking off the flowers to make the roots grow better), our apple tree is a few years, and I don't know when our raspberries come.

While we were gone, our broccoli pretty much died and is beyond hope (at least for us, we really don't have any green thumbs) but our tomatoes are getting bigger by the day. They still haven't made it outside yet because every time we want to do it, the ground is too saturated from all our rain. Our other vegetable seeds also haven't made it out yet and it may be too late. Perhaps we'll just plant them next year? I'm not sure. We got kind of lazy with our garden, especially since it's really started to heat up and get extremely humid (think like 95%+). So, we'll just have to see how much stuff we can get done while the sun's on its way down because our backyard sure gets a lot of sun during the day!

Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes are my worst enemy. They LOVE me. They eat me right up. For instance, last night I sat in front of a citronella candle (supposedly mosquito repellent) for about 20 minutes and I got 12 new bites. I've had bites through my clothes, even in jeans! I don't know how they do it. I did read that they can smell their "prey" up to 50 meters away though. There is still a lot of research needed about who they like the most but they know it has to do with natural things like lactic acid, uric acid, and carbon dioxide (what you breathe out. The more you breathe, the more they find you).

From what I can tell, repellents with 30% DEET are the best (but being pregnant, I can't use anything higher than 10%). Also, those new products that clip on you are supposed to work really well and then you don't have to slather the spray on because it's all contained. I had heard decent things about those candles too but apparently that didn't work so well.

There are many products available and sometimes, the best thing you can do is just try different ones and see what works best for you. All I know is they really really like me and I haven't found a product that works well enough yet. I'll keep you posted if I find something amazing.

The Last Week Updates

So as I mentioned, I was cat sitting (and apartment sitting) for my sister and then going to my parent's house for a wedding this past weekend. Boy, was that a busy week! Cat sitting went just fine but they live in the city and it's nice for a little bit of a vacation but I don't think I could ever live there. It's just not my lifestyle. Then, the wedding was lots of fun but I felt like I hardly got to spend any time with my family because the weekend was so rushed (we got there Friday night, slept most of Saturday, then left Sunday afternoon) so we might go back soon. On the way home, due to lots of construction, our exit was closed and we had to go the long way home. I was so angry because we'd been in the car forever since we had missed the last rest stop (also due to construction). It seems like our whole route was under construction!

Our bunny, Cocoa, seems fine. We had David's brother check on her once or twice while we were gone (she can go about five days with a full food bowl and a full water bottle). She is looking at me now though like, "are you here to stay this time? Or are you just leaving again?". It's kind of cute but I think we're all trying to get back to our regular schedules.

One other thing we did last week was go to my doctor appointment to listen to our baby's heartbeat! I hadn't mentioned I was pregnant before (I'm almost 11 weeks now) because we were waiting due to the high risk of miscarriage in the beginning but after hearing the heartbeat and knowing how much teeny (that's what we call the baby) moves, it seems like we have a very healthy baby. I'm due January 15th and so far, have experienced pretty much every symptom they said I would, the worst being the nausea and vomiting. They do say that should pass in these next couple weeks though so I'll keep you posted.

I think that's everything new with us. Just getting back to regular life and I'll try to keep up with blog posts this week.

Just Wait

I am sorry I have not been posting lately. I was busy getting ready to cat sit for my sister. David and I go and live in their apartment while we do that (don't worry, we have a bunny sitter). We are staying here til Thursday then during the weekend, we are going to my parent's house (six hours away) for a wedding. I will try to post again next Monday so please stay tuned.

Birds in the Morning

The last couple days have been nice enough that we have our bedroom window open at night. Right outside this window is a huge pine tree. I can't guarantee all the obnoxious birds live in it but it does seem like some do. These birds wake us up between 3 and 4am. We already get up at 5:30am so David can get off to work on time so waking up a few hours earlier is not exactly pleasant. Most of the birds are tolerable. We wake up when they do but then we fall back asleep. Sometimes it's actually nice to hear because it means it's no longer winter (and boy did that drag on this past year!). However, there's one bird (I'm not good at bird identification so don't ask me what it is) that sounds like an alarm clock going off. It's louder than all the other birds, it's chirping is screechier and longer, and if this bird is making noise outside the window, it is IMPOSSIBLE to go back to sleep. He's just so obnoxious! He better do his part in the animal kingdom and eat mosquitoes or something because otherwise, I'm not going to be able to put up with him much longer. The other thing we could do is close the window but the fresh air is always nice and it could be too hot and muggy any day now to have it open so we should enjoy it while we can. I just wish the birds would stop waking us up.