At this writing it is mid-June, and the morning is surprisingly cool and comfortable. I work in front of a large window giving me a view of the front-yard landscaping and the weeds that are taking over. Unable to stand it, I just decided to pull weeds in a particularly overrun section, and now I feel much better. 

Two years ago, I suddenly started having a reaction to poison ivy or poison oak (I still haven’t figured out what the offending plant looks like), and it happened again this morning. Luckily, last summer a neighbor told me that she drinks pickle juice before weeding and never has a problem. A few weeks later, after being outside and seeing some weeds and pulling them—this is how I weed: I just see a few weeds and a couple hours later, I’m pulling them from every nook and cranny of the yard—I started itching and developing a rash. I rushed inside to do my regular poison-plant protocol, which doesn’t work that well, and I added in drinking pickle juice. Surprisingly, the itching stopped and the rash on my arm disappeared. I really had no expectation that pickle juice would work, and I still wonder about it. Even so, when I start having a reaction (which I did this morning), my go-to is pickle juice. I have been just fine ever since. 

It occurred to me that there’s a good chance a lot of people have DIY hacks: natural, homemade recipes or protocols to address common problems. If you have something like this that works well and you’d like to share it, please email [email protected] with the subject line “DIY” and tell us about your recipe or protocol, the problem it addresses, and perhaps an experience you had that convinced you that it worked. We’d like to share these tips online and possibly in print. 

Wishing you a happy Fourth and month of July,

Shannon

PS: It is Grillo’s Dill Spears, and I drink the juice—dill, garlic and all.