"Old Time Wisdom"

All Purpose Cleaner

1cup Rubbing Alcohol

1/4 cup Ammonia

1 cup Water

Mix together in a spray bottle. This stuff works great and cleans anything! I keep a bottle under the counter in the kitchen and the bathroom. This recipe came to me from my old life long neighbor where I grew up Mrs. Staats. They were great neighbors. The kind of folks who had plenty of time for a wandering little girl who might mosey over to see what was going on in the garden (hopefully raspberrys), or invite her in for a visit and a cool glass of water if she’d been playing too long outdoors.

Garden Party Bug Fog

If you’re getting ready to have a get together out in the yard, earlier in the day when you mow the lawn add a few drops of citronella oil to the gas tank. As the exhaust settles on the grass it permeates the area with a hint citronella, which will help keep the bugs away.

Bread and Milk Poultice

One time I got the tiniest splinter of glass in the bottom of my foot. I tried using a fine sewing needle and tweezers but I just couldn’t get it. It wasn’t the end of the world because it was practically invisible, but I could feel it when I walked on it like a little pin prick, this older lady that I worked with at the time, Clara, informed me that I needed a bread and milk poultice. Of course I was younger and more skeptical back then, but she explained that if I took a small piece of bread and moistened it with milk and used a bandage to hold it in place on the splinter over night, it would draw the splinter out. Really, just to prove her wrong, and also because I couldn’t imagine the possibility of it working and I wanted to see for myself, I went home and tried it. I was STUNNED, STUNNED, I tell you, when I pulled back one side of that bandage the next morning and there next to the piece of bread was the small blue splinter of glass from the candle holder I’d broken a few days before! I pass this on to anyone who has a splinter. My friend even used it on vacation when she got an enormous zit right in the middle of her forehead! It worked, that zit was gone in one day. I wont mention any names but we still talk about that bread and milk poultice and how it got rid of the vacation zit from you know where!

I’m fascinated by this “old time” wisdom, I think everybody has these great old family remedies, wisdom, tips, and advice that we can tune in to, or risk that they may be lost to future generations.

My niece and her family came for a visit from Georgia this last week to show off the new baby. When babies come along, you can’t help but reminisce about the special people, long gone you wish could have met your new baby. Well Alan, my niece’s husband got to telling stories about his Grandma, he said she re-used and recycled everything. She had less trash in a month than he had in one week! The old ways really are the green ways! She had the ability of ridding people of warts. Which sounds funny to say, but it’s kind of a gift, especially if you’re the one who’s got warts! Alan also mentioned his Uncle Howard and all the interesting things he learned from him, we’d be here all day…I love that kind of talk, if I tried to share all of it, but one thing that stands out is that he learned how chimneys naturally pull toward the sun. Now as we were chatting he just kind of threw that out there, so of course I had to find out what that meant because I have only ever seen straight chimneys. So here’s how it works, the mortar on the sunny side will dry faster and have a tendency to pull the chimney toward the sun. To balance this they added salt to the mortar mixture to hold the moisture in longer. The detail with which Uncle Howard built his house and lived his life, and Grandma, through Alan’s stories they are now some of my favorite people too. I wish I could have met them, in a way I kind if feel like I have.

Blessings Friends

Melissa