Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines Review

I was sent a copy of the Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines to review a couple weeks ago. If you’re into mythology, it’s a nice resource on the many female characters found in mythology all around the world.

The book is divided by continent and then by region, allowing you to explore goddesses and heroines from a particular region if you so choose. If you prefer, you can also look them up by name in the index, very helpful if you aren’t entirely certain where to look for a particular name.

My oldest daughter was really excited when this book came. She loves mythology. She was a little sad that each goddess or heroine only has a little information, usually a couple of paragraphs, a quick story about her, not a full story, so I explained to her that that’s not how encyclopedias work. It’s a reference for who each one is, not a collection of stories. You do get a bit of the story of each, but not in the way my daughter wants her mythology. But then this isn’t for children; it’s a reference book.

There’s also a bit of information about how each one is celebrated in her region, as appropriate, such as which festivals she may be associated with.

If you enjoy mythology, and want a reference to help you discover more female deities to explore, this may be a good choice for you. If you enjoy celebrating the divine feminine, you may also enjoy it as a resource. You’ll be amazed at how many goddesses there are that you’ve never heard of, even from mythologies you have some familiarity with.

How to Gopher Proof Your Raised Garden Beds

How to Gopher Proof Your Raised Garden Beds

We have a real gopher problem in our backyard. We get their mounds all over the yard, and of course if we plant directly into the soil, we know we risk losing that entire plant to the gophers. Building a raised garden bed, however, can make it much simpler to avoid damage from gophers.

This solution is very simple. Build your raised garden bed, and put a good quality hardware cloth on the bottom, so that gophers cannot get through. Attach this to the bottom of your raised garden bed with staples and overlap enough that gophers cannot get through.

It’s that simple to keep them out. They may still get any roots that grow past the hardware cloth, but most of the roots of your plants will be completely safe.

Of course, you’ll probably want to deal with the gophers for the sake of the rest of your yard. I prefer natural methods, and much miss the neighbor cat who used to handle my gopher problems for us, and was a total sweetheart besides. My landlord says we can only have an outdoor only cat, and with the coyote pack living nearby, there’s no way I would do that. I would have to bring the cat in at night.

Sometimes you’ll be fortunate enough to have an owl or snake help you out. We caught a very young gopher snake in our yard once, but we’ve never seen it since – pity. It was beautiful. We didn’t have much of a gopher problem at that time, so it probably didn’t stick around.

Some also say used coffee grounds work as a gopher repellent. My husband tried this once, and it seems to work pretty well. Unfortunately, we aren’t coffee drinkers, so getting coffee grounds takes some actual effort; it’s not something we just have around the house. Some plants love the acid in coffee grounds, so you may even benefit your garden by using them.

You can also trap gophers. You can follow this link for some advice on the U.C. Davis website, and you can check with your local hardware store or garden center, as well as Amazon.com for traps. I’m not a fan of poisoning gophers – too much can go wrong for other animals.

There’s really only so much you can do about gophers coming back – they’re persistent critters, and these steps won’t protect against other pests. The best you can do is take steps to keep them away from your most vulnerable plants, and learn to handle it when they do come around.

What’s the Big Deal With Oil Pulling?

Let’s start by noting that this is not intended as medical advice. I’ve included some links so you can get what information you can on oral health and oil pulling, but I’m not a doctor, dentist or anyone else who can tell you what will benefit your health. Get your salt shaker and take it along, one grain of salt as necessary as you read.

Oil pulling has become pretty popular lately. All kinds of health benefits have been claimed by proponents. I do it occasionally, and I have friends who do it. Is oil pulling really that wonderful?

Oil pulling is simple but a bit time consuming. Most sources say you should put some sesame seed oil or coconut oil in your mouth and swish it around for 20 minutes for the best benefit, then spit into the trash. This isn’t easy to do, especially if you try in the morning when the kids are up and full of questions. Even five minutes has an effect in my experience, however.

In my experience, it’s pretty good. I don’t know about all the wondrous health claims some people make, but I do think it helps whiten teeth and helps get more stuff out of gums. I don’t believe the bit about pulling toxins from the body. I think any health benefits may come from having a cleaner mouth, which your dentist should agree means better overall health – just take a look at the connection between oral health and heart disease or diabetes.

This does not mean oil pulling will help you with these problems. It only means that you should pay attention to your oral health to benefit your overall health. Don’t neglect brushing, flossing or routine dental care.

Oil pulling looks promising for the reduction of Streptococcus mutans. This may be due more to a saponification and emulisification process rather than anything antibacterial. Studies so far have been small, so there’s a long ways to go in terms of proving any benefit. I also saw a headline on Pubmed about oil pulling being associated with lipoid pneumonia (caused by breathing in small amounts of the oil), but no abstract. Still, it’s good to be aware that it may not be entirely harmless.

This article on it on Jezebel is interesting too, especially the section with opinions from a periodontist.

Please don’t assume that oil pulling will solve all your health problems. There’s a lot being said about it that has not been proven. By the same token, it strikes me as a simple thing to try if it interests you and you don’t expect miracles and understand the risks.

Organic Eggs? Free Range Eggs? Cage Free? Which Should You Choose?

Organic Eggs? Free Range Eggs? Cage Free? Which Should You Choose?

If you’ve become interested in improving the kinds of foods you eat, eggs are probably one of the foods you’ve taken a good look at. There are options out there for those who want better eggs. The hard part is figuring out what “better” really is.

Now my personal favorite eggs are the ones I get from my sister once in a while. She doesn’t live close enough that we get them often, but she has backyard chickens. They roam the yard during the day, eating what they find, plus the scraps the family gives them and the chicken feed my sister uses. I don’t know all the details. I do know the shells are much stronger than the shells on grocery store eggs, and there is a visible color difference in the yolks.

But not everyone has access to backyard chicken eggs even part of the time. It’s worth looking at your options and really knowing what all the terminology really means, because it’s not necessarily what you think.

Note that the color of the eggshell really doesn’t matter. My sister’s chickens product brown or green eggs, depending on the breed, but there’s no difference in the quality of the eggs due to their coloration.

Cage Free Eggs

Cage free chickens have things just a little better than your standard caged chicken. They’re usually in a building full of chickens, crowded, but they can at least walk and stretch their wings. They probably don’t go outside, however. They probably do get treated with antibiotics. It’s an improvement but not much of one.

Free Range Eggs

This one doesn’t usually mean what you think it means. Take your cage free chickens and give them a little access to the outdoors. This does not mean they have access to pasture where they can eat grass and bugs. There are no rules about how long each chicken gets outside.

Organic Eggs

Organic chickens can usually go outside some, and they cannot be treated with antibiotics. They are also give organic feed. The facilities are inspected annually by an agency with USDA accreditation.

Pasture Raised Eggs

Pasture raised chickens lead the kind of life you’d think free range means. They have free access to come and go from their coop, and can eat grass and bugs as they find them. They are usually given organic feed and not treated with antibiotics. This is as close as you can get to raising your own chickens in the backyard.

6 Times Recycling Isn’t the Answer

6 Times Recycling Isn't the Answer

You’re probably familiar with the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” mantra. It’s an easy reminder of ways to avoid waste. The problem comes in when too many people rely on the last part – recycle – and pay too little attention to the first two. There are a number of reasons why recycling isn’t necessarily the right answer when you’re trying to cut back on waste.

1. You don’t need to recycle what you haven’t bought in the first place.

Reduce is first on the list for a very good reason. You aren’t causing as much waste if you just buy less in the first place. In this case, waste include the recycling of excess products and their packaging.

2. Keep using what you’ve got.

Sending something out for recycling just because you want a new version isn’t environmentally friendly. Cell phones are a strong example of this. According to Scientific American, Americans replace their cell phones on average every 22 months.  That’s ridiculous. Yes, phone and network features have been changing steadily over the past several years, but how much improvement do you really need?

There are times when it makes some sense to replace something you own and still works with a new version, but it doesn’t happen that often. Older refrigerators and freezers may be inefficient enough to be worth replacing even before they break down, for example, and sometimes cities offer haul away programs for them, and may even pay you a little for them. These programs help ensure that such items are properly recycled.

Shopping bags can be reused, for example, even if they aren’t the ones you buy for that purpose. Gift bags and boxes can be used over and over again, so long as they’re in decent condition.

You can also buy things specifically to replace things you might otherwise recycle after only a use or two. Cloth napkins, cloth diapers, stainless steel drinking bottles, rechargeable batteries and so on can replace things you’d otherwise throw out.

3. Repurpose/reuse it.

Some of the things you might otherwise recycle can be repurposed or reused. I keep a supply of empty glass jars around because they’re just so handy for other things. I can’t keep all of them, so a number still go out for recycling over time, but it’s really nice to have a variety of them on hand for when I need one.

I also save a lot of kind of random stuff for my kids to reuse. My oldest daughter in particular – she’s in a club called Destination Imagination, and reusing items is a great way to stay in budget on each year’s challenge. I can’t tell her what to use or how to use it – that’s against the rules – but I can make it available.

Old clothes can be made into new things. This can be especially nice to do with clothes you’re sentimental about. Some people make old sports jerseys into quilts, for example. For less sentimental things, such as that pair of jeans that has worn out, you can consider making a shopping bag or other practical item, depending on how strong the material is.

Be safe about reuse. Some items aren’t particularly safe for reuse and really are better off being recycled. Containers that have held hazardous materials aren’t your best choice for reuse, as a general rule. Similarly, don’t put anything dangerous into a container that makes it look safe or appealing.

4. Sell it.

So you don’t want to reuse it yourself. So what? Is it something someone else would enjoy reusing? You can sell individual items through eBay, Craigslist or any buy-sell-trade boards for your community you may find on Facebook. You get some money, the buyer gets a product for cheaper than they’d get it new. No recycling required.

You can also have a garage sale if you’ve accumulated a lot of stuff and have the patience to put a price on it and hold the sale. You can make some decent money for your effort this way, depending on what you have.

5. Give it away.

If it’s not worth selling, can you just give it away? Or would you prefer to see how much it helps someone else without money as a consideration?

My sisters and I do this with kids’ clothes, handing them down to each other so that much of what the younger kids wear have been through a few other kids already. The clothes could be worth selling, certainly, but we help each other out by handing clothes down freely.

Freecycle is a great site to use when you just want to give something away. Join your local board and post what you have available.

There are also charities such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army, as well as smaller organizations, that can make use of things you’d like to give away. The advantage to these is that you can get a tax deduction based on the fair market value of the items you donate.

6. Buy used.

When you can, be a part of the reuse cycle by buying used items yourself. Children’s clothes are often a wonderful place to start, but you can often find other good quality items for your home and family at thrift stores, consignment shops,or from companies that make new products from used items. The longer an item can be usefully kept out of the recycling stream, the better it often is for the environment.

Make no mistake, recycling – as in breaking down the old material to make something new – is extremely important. It shouldn’t be your first thought, however. Do your best to reduce your purchases and waste, and to reuse or repurpose things when you can. Then look at recycling.