Pickles

Theresa recently made a batch of pickles from cucumbers which grew in her veggie garden...

Basket of cucumbers

Cucumbers sliced and ready to be pickled...

Pickles

Birds...

A few weeks ago I was at the Dodge Nature Center and identified these birds for the first time:

• Green Heron
• Female Bluebird
• Red-bellied Woodpecker
• Alder Flycather

Water bottles

I have avoided buying single use bottled waters, for economic and environmental reasons, as much as I can. As a result, I (especially the kids) started to drink water from various water bottles, from freebies to nalgene-type bottle that I have purchased. Although it's nice to get free water bottles, they tend to make water taste like plastic. Yech! In the past year or so I have read many articles in regards to bpa within plastic bottles leaking into the water/liquid. This is especially bad for growing kids and babies. I decided to throw away all those old bottles and will try out the new bpa-free bottles.

Recently purchased Camelbak bpa-free water bottle

Where to get bpa-free bottles...

• http://www.backcountry.com/store/group/96/Water-Bottles.html
• http://www.kleankanteen.com/
• http://www.camelbak.com/index.cfm
• http://www.guyotdesigns.com/stainlessbottles?sc=11

Deck

This past weekend I worked on the cedar deck that was installed last fall. To clean the deck I used OxiClean. To seale the deck I discovered a product, from Hirschfields, called Soy Guard which is made from soybeans and is non-toxin.

I had some reservations in regards to cleaning the deck after going to HomeDepot and was told to use products that wanted/required me to cover plants, grass and anything organic. Yikes! This was not good as Theresa's veggie garden is next to the deck. I did some research and ran into something called oxygen bleach as a safe alternative to cleaning the deck. By coincidence I learned that OxiClean is a type of oxygen bleach and I has already had some. Oxiclean is a blend of sodium percarbonate and natural sodium carbonate and does not harm grass or plants. Yes! From start to finish the whole project took close to 15+ hours of work over 3 days...

Here are a few before and after photos:

Before seal was applied to deck board

After seale is applied...