https://lindaghill.com/category/stream-of-consciousness-saturday/

Container gardening is what I do in New Jersey to grow my herbs and veggies. In spite of the warmer than normal temperatures and the blasted squirrels we’ve had a productive growing season. The squirrels are a nuisance when it comes to letting things ripen naturally on the vine. I’m always having to pick ahead of time because they steal the fruit or veggies when their perfect.
I was hoping that they wouldn’t be as prominent in Las Vegas as they are here but unfortunately that’s not the case. They’re a nuisance there as well. GRRRRR
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A friend was commenting on my Halloween decorations. She thought they were pretty but didn’t envy the packing them away after. The good news is they actually fit into 6 rubbermaid containers nicely. I chose the rubbermaid containers to discourage spiders and mice from nesting when everything goes in the crawl space. Now you’re probably thinking mice will chew plastic. Yes, this is true but I saturate lots of cotton balls with peppermint oil and promptly seal the containers. When I unpack each year, there’s a faint trace of peppermint left with my decorations. I know that a lot of sources note that peppermint oil isn’t effective but it has worked very well with my containers especially since there’s no food source either for them.
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I read today to discourage mosquitoes, ticks, spiders from getting on your skin to wear Vicks around your ankles, wrists, and neck. I’m curious if putting open containers of Vick’s with my decorations as well would also be helpful once I put everything in storage when we move. It would take longer to dry out. Eucalyptus oil, cedar leaf oil, nutmeg oil, petrolatum, thymol and turpentine oil and adding peppermint oil to mix for good measure. I’m going to give it a try, I don’t care if my decorations gain an interesting new aroma when I unpack them again.
Finally, there seems to be song about everything on YouTube.
That sucks about the squirrels. So glad your peppermint oil works against the mice though.
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It’s funny with squirrels, they are real connoisseurs of fresh produce, and they always take just one big bite before moving on to the next.
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