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The same mask that stops colds and flu in the winter can help you breathe easier when forest fires are filling our air with smoke.  Your breath moistens the inside of the mask; smoke particles get caught up in the moist cloth, greatly reducing the amount you take into your lungs.  A bandanna cold mask has more cloth to catch the smoke than a dust mask or medical mask, and more room inside it to breathe easily.           You can breathe easier in your yard by using misters to clear the smoke by taking it to the ground, where it becomes good fertilizer.  The snakelike standing plastic misters with twin emitters that you can usually buy at the Grange Coop or Diamond Building Supply work very well for this, as they produce a very fine mist.  They also can be moved around, as they are made to be used on a hose.  (The hose should be heavy duty 5/8” or cheap ½” to take the pressure.)  Individual mist emitters tha...

Kombucha brewing.  The scoby is so thick because I have not made more since I stopped drinking it. An afterword to " Make Kombucha Tea ," August 2014. After drinking too much of Kombucha daily for perhaps 8 years or 9 years, I've figured out that it was causing side effects.  I was told in the beginning that one should drink just a small glass first thing in the morning, before eating anything.  I like it so much that I just drank a pint all day long, putting it over ice first, and then diluting it more with water as the day goes on, so as not to ingest too much sugar.  I like the way a little sugar and acid make water less dry on the throat. For a long time I had constant soreness in the muscles in my arms, a common side effect of statins, which are used to lower cholesterol.  I have never bought into the anti-cholesterol fad, any more than the anti-fat fad.  A few days ago, I got to thinking about red rice yeast, which is rice fermented in a f...

About 6 weeks ago, I stopped eating cashews because I thought they might be contributing to inflammation and thus causing the arthritis that was making me think I had to give up gardening professionally.  My symptoms immediately began to ease, and I was able to stop taking cayenne to control them.  I still have sore muscles from overuse at times, but not the pain that caused me to eventually use a full teaspoon of cayenne every day, which caused other painful symptoms as it came out. I had been eating about a half-cup of cashews nearly every day with my lunch for the last 10 years for their vitaminB17, AKA Laetrile , which supposedly wards off cancer.  It was a good excuse to eat an expensive but favorite nut that I saw listed in the sources of this vitamin. I had occasionally been having arthritis symptoms in my hip before I changed my lunch from tomato juice with a half-teaspoon of cayenne and a yogurt, to sesame-chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and cashews, and tak...

Kombucha brewing.  The scoby is so thick because I have not made more since I stopped drinking it. Kombucha is black tea and sugar cultured with a “scoby” or “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast,” a white, rubbery bacterial/fungal matte that has been kept alive, divided and multiplied for perhaps thousands of years since it was discovered in Asia.  It’s also called Manchurian Tea and the scoby is also called a “mushroom.” After a week of culturing, it has a sweet-tart flavor that becomes more tart as the week passes.  It has a vinegary scent that is off-putting, but once one tastes, one can become quickly addicted.  This drinker likes it best diluted with ice and flavored with fruit juices, like apple and tart cherry. It’s good to drink because the scoby converts the sugar and tannin in the tea mostly to vinegar with maybe 1% alcohol, very good for the digestive system, and otherwise good for health.  It cannot go bad, just more tart, because ...