This Blog is for my oldest daughter who just doesn’t like these critters. 

Spoiler Allert: Your ears are probably safe

Canadians aren’t the only ones enjoying the outdoors in our beautiful summer. So are earwigs. Here are a few things you should know about these creatures.

The Name Translates to Ear Wiggler

There are differing opinions about where the word earwig comes from. Some say the shape of their wings resembles an ear. (My daughter is now more freaked out as she didn’t know they had wings and could fly.) Other say they were thought to crawl into your ear and eat your brain - gross. 

However, different languages have similar translations. In French they are called perce-oreille or ear piercer; in German, ohrwurm - ear worm and in Russian, ukhovertka - ear turner. 

They Prefer Rotting Plants

Bugs can crawl into a human ear, but the earwig would rather eat your decomposing plants than your temporal lobe.

However, this insect isn’t strictly vegetarian. It will also eat smaller bugs to satisfy their appetite. So I think your much larger brain is safe.

They Will Pinch

Earwigs are not venomous and bites are rare; however, their pincers can be used if necessary. According to researchers, a pinch is a defence mechanism. The earwig won’t chase after you, but if you are itching to pick one up - they will pinch- so maybe wear gloves when doing so.

Warmer Weather Means More of Them

Similar to other Canadians who go south in the winter, earwigs can survive the cold but they love the warmth and so do their young. Most emerge as adults in early July, If June is warm, then the survival rate for eggs and the young is higher.

They Have Wings  

Earwigs rarely fly - but the way their wings work is a phenomenon that intrigues scientists around the world. Without any muscle activation, the wings can grow up to 10 times their size and fold back perfectly.

They Love Fish Oil

If you find yourself with a lot of these bugs a way to trap them is with fish oil. Grab a sardine can (or any other oily tinned fish), keep in the oil and fill the rest with dirt. The earwigs will crawl right in.

They Help The Environment

Since earwigs feed on decaying plant material, they help dispose of it. What’s more, they will also keep your garden clear of slug eggs, aphids and other smaller pests.

Working from home maybe come the new normal, these essentials will keep you comfortable and productive.

When working from home you have probably realized that a desk area on a kitchen counter or the dining table isn’t the best setup. Once you’ve chosen a room or area for your office, here are five must-haves to include.

Comfortable Chair

Make sure you have the right chair for the job. This is especially important if you work at a computer. Look for a chair that supports your back and encourages good posture. Features to look for include adjustable seat, arms and back, as well as legs on rollers and a seat that swivels so you can easily get in and out of the chair and reach for things without straining.

No matter the type of chair you choose, be sure to take stretch breaks and move around throughout the day. And go to the sofa or armchair for relaxing or reading.

Work Surface That Fits Your Needs

The size of your desk or work surface will depend on the size of your office and budget. Consider different desk types and even creative repurposing of other furniture pieces. Think about how you’ll be working and the items you’ll want to have close at hand. To help keep your work surface neat, invest in attractive desk organizers and plan for at least a few shelves or drawers for things you use or reference less frequently.

A Place for Everything

Most of us haven’t reached the point of having a paperless office, and keeping paper organized is easier with the right mix of drawers, and shelves. If you don’t have a lot of papers to file or objects to display, a simple cabinet on wheels or shelf might offer enough storage. 

Good Task Lighting

A standard ceiling light provides overall light but you may also want to include task lighting for reading and other close work. A desk lamp, wall sconces and natural light from windows can help increase your lighting.

Electrical Outlets for Equipment

If you live in an older home, electrical outlets may be limited. Be sure you have enough for your electrical equipment. Keeping cords and wiring out of sight is easiest with storage areas that are flush against the wall. But if you’re planning a floating or freestanding desk, you can use cord covers to keep wiring neat and safe.

And don’t forget to include something that makes you happy or inspires you, whether it’s a sunny window, a treasured artwork or a furry companion to keep you company.

Having an air conditioner is a must in many climates where long heat waves are a summer’s norm and with that, comes a high energy bill. Even in areas like ours, on the west coast, we can still experience enough hot days in a row to feel it. There are some ways of cooling your home which are cheaper and kinder to the planet than running A/C.

Staying cool doesn’t have to be hard. Whether you want to save money by using your A/C less or brave the heat without one, here are six ways that will help you, your family and your pets stay cool.

Block the Sun From Reaching Your Windows

The best way to beat the heat is to block the sunlight before it reaches your house. Whether you do that by hanging shades, installing awnings or even planting trees, the most effective use of the funds in your home-cooling budget is this.

It’s a simple concept, we do it with beach umbrellas to protect our skin and carports to shade our cars. Yet when it comes to houses, we tend to believe that interior drapes are as effective as exterior shading. But this is simply not true.

The more shading you can include on the outside, the better. If you can’t afford a new matching set of shutters, consider a simple overhang made with brackets and timber slats to block your windows from the intense summer sun.

Solar-control window films can offer UV protection and reduce the amount of heat gained from solar radiation. Compared with some elaborate shading systems, these could be a less expensive alternative.

Even simple and very inexpensive bamboo blinds can block a good amount of sunlight without sacrificing daylight.

If you’re planting trees for shade or installing any kind of shading, think about the sun’s path through the sky and how it’s rays hit your house.

Energy-efficient houses depend on well-designed shading systems, because the best way to avoid summer heat is by blocking the sun’s rays from ever reaching the windows.

Add Interior Drapes, Blinds or Shades

Once the heat from the sun passes through the glass, that heat will need to be ventilated to escape. To keep your floors and walls from soaking up heat from direct rays and emitting it throughout the day, it can help to add another layer of protection between the window and the main thermal mass of your home.

Sheer window treatments are a nice way to mitigate direct sun rays but maintain soft, natural daylight. Plus, white reflects sunlight better than colors.

There are a couple of tricks that you can use with sheer drapes that you can’t with interior blinds or shades. 

Throw sheer drapes in the laundry the night before a really hot day or just dunk them in a bucket of water and ring them out. If you want add 4 or 5 drops of an essential oil, a scent you like. In the morning, take the damp drapes directly from the washer or the bucket and clip them to the rod. The open windows let the morning breeze pass through the drapes, cooling the air and filling your room with a fresh smell if you add the essential oil. By the time the drapes have dried, it’s probably about time to shut the windows, before the intense heat of the day starts. You could do the same in the evening.

Get the Air Circulating

Air will flow only if it is forced through a fan of some sort or if there is a large temperature difference with a neighboring body of air.

Night cooling is a great way to naturally decrease the temperature in your house and exchange hot interior air for cooler outdoor air. Have your windows open only in the early morning, at night or late in the evening when it is cooler outside than your ideal temperature indoors.

You may need to do some testing to see what works best for you, depending on your climate and the orientation of your house toward the sun. For this to work, there needs to be a substantial difference in temperature between the inside of your house and the outside. Once the outdoor air starts to heat up, close your windows to try and keep as much of that heat out as possible.

Ceiling fans and standing fans placed near windows at night can help force the air movement when there is no breeze and a small temperature difference. During the day the added air movement from fans can help the perception of heat, which is tied to humidity.

The reason everyone loves misters in the summer is for the evaporative cooling effect of water being lifted off the skin. Keep keep a couple of misters around the house, hidden near the fans, for a quick spritz as you pass by, animals will love it too.

Another evaporative cooling tip, borrowed from history, is to set a big chunk of ice (or ice packs) in front of a fan with a tray underneath to catch the water as it melts. It makes for a cheap and effective DIY air conditioner for small rooms. Close off the space as much as possible, so you don’t lose that great cool air.

Turn Off Major Appliances During the Day

To help maintain cooler temperatures during the day, reduce anything that generates heat in your house or apartment. For example, don’t use the dryer or oven and try not to open the fridge too often. The more you open it, the more the motor has to work to cool it down again, and the heat generated from that work will be released back into your apartment.

Try fresh summer salads or BBQ to avoid using your oven and stovetop.

Transition Your Bed Into Summer Mode

Many of us feel summer heat the most when trying to sleep. Reduce the amount of bedding you have and stick to natural fabrics like linen or 100 percent cotton. Synthetic blends don’t breathe enough to release all the heat we generate during the night.

Sleep on the porch or balcony. “Outdoor sleeping has come to stay, so let us recognize the fact and build our houses accordingly.” This declaration appeared in the magazine Decorative Homes of Moderate Costs in 1921, responding to the widespread fad of sleeping on screened porches. For many years, sleeping porches were an integral part of home designs.

Depending on your home or apartment and security concerns, you may have a little exterior screened-in space that can be used like a sleeping porch. You could have a little daybed with light bedding for nights when it’s comfortable enough to sleep in open air.

Or, forgo the bed altogether and sleep in a hammock for the summer!

Stay Hydrated

Everyone knows that staying hydrated in summer is extremely important. But did you know that drinking water also helps regulate your body temperature?

Enjoy the summer and its heat!

A $3.2 million pilot project, the first of its kind in Canada, was established in Elmsdale, Nova Scotia  to introduce renewable energy battery storage systems to 10 homes. This could eventually change how Nova Scotians and Canadians power their homes

The project, which is a joint effort of Nova Scotia Power, Tesla and Ontario energy company Opus One Solutions, was launched in 2017. A grid-size battery was installed at Elmsdale's substation and 10 Tesla powerwalls were installed in nearby homes.

"Our goal is to study if customers enjoy the reliability that the batteries provide. That all the cases we are testing are successful and the batteries can do what we want them to do," said Jill Searle, the smart grid program manager for Nova Scotia Power. "The next question is where would we deploy them, so it's effective for the grid and effective for customers."

Wind energy powers the Tesla power pack at the substation, which sends energy to be stored in the powerwalls of the 10 homes. The grid could power up to 300 homes, but only 10 are being tested as lithium ion is expensive.

Searle said, “Testing the system is just the first step in trying to harness and store wind energy, and eventually, solar power. Being able to take that energy stored in the battery until a time that our customers need it, that's a benefit to us and for customers as well.

We have been encouraged by the pilot study and hope more testing will be done to make renewable energy more affordable and available to more people.” 

Mark Candow, one of the homeowners selected for the pilot, remarked, "From my standpoint, it is essentially a quiet generator. The power goes out [and] I get a text from Tesla saying the power is out, but I don't realize it because my power is still on. During Hurrican Dorian the powerwall gave me 19 hours of electricty when my power went out.”

The powerwalls serve as sources of extra power during outages but could one day serve as a way to power homes through solar panels connected to the home.

Searle said the next step is to do more analysis on the cost of lithium-ion batteries.

"We want to make sure we're making decisions that are good for customers, so we're going to watch the price of that and potentially deploy batteries at other locations in the future," she said.

I guess the individuals involved in this pilot project will be waiting eagerly for September 22, 2020 as Teslas just announced its offical schedule for Battery Day. This live event will reveal significant advances in battery and battery production technolog from Tesla and its partners, specifically cost and durability. 

Cities around the world are encouraging their citizens to grow vegetable, herbs and fruit to help alleviate possible food insecurity due to the Covid-19 pandemic

Here’s how you can create a food garden, no matter the size or your patio or yard.

A Container Food Garden on Your Patio

Many edibles do very well when grown in pots and there are plenty of dwarf varieties of plants to choose from. 

Leafy greens are easy to grow in containers, and they do well in partial sun. Tomato varieties are really great, too. Just make sure you pick things that you’ll enjoy eating.

If you want to grow lots of food, you can start from a seed indoors, or outdoors when the ground has completely thawed— but if you’re just doing one or two tomato plants, it makes more sense to buy seedling plants instead. 

If you’re growing produce for your community, some of the faster-growing options include salad greens and spinach. Even if your property only gets four or five hours of sun a day, you can still grow plenty of delicious vegetables like carrots, beets, garlic and kale that can make a real difference. 

Lacking Space? Look Up!

Condo and Townhouse dwellers can also grow edibles efficiently, thanks to vertical gardening. For example, you can plant shallow-rooted plants like strawberries, radishes and herbs in gutters and hang them along a fence.

“I’ve seen people grow vining plants from a balcony box, either growing them down or to the side,” says Biggs. “It’s a fantastic idea in an urban setting to make the use of your space.”

Try vining produce like cucumbers, pole beans, summer squash or melons. 

Get the Kids Involved

Gardening is family-friendly and teaches children about where their food comes from? Let them decide what to plant.

“See what interests them; I have one child who just loves bugs, another who is really fascinated with birds, and another who loves plants and tomatoes; different kids will be attracted to different things in the garden,” says Steven Biggs, who wrote Gardening With Emma, a kid-to-kid guide to planting food. 

“That could translate into a bug-themed garden or plants to attract birds. Or you can do fun projects like a garden teepee that you grow pole beans on or maybe a sunflower house hideout.”

Set Up Some Straw Bales

For people living in urban areas with no green space at all, take a second look at your driveway or the alleyway between your home and your neighbours’; it’s the perfect spot for a straw bale food garden. 

Straw bale gardening is really easy and a quick way to start: The bale is both the growing medium and the container. 

Three to four weeks before you plant, water your bales and add fertilizer so it starts to decompose. Then, plant right into the bale. 

“I’ve turned half of my driveway into a temporary garden with tomatoes, peppers, beans and flowers,” says Biggs. “It’s a fantastic pop-up garden if people don’t want to invest a lot in permanent infrastructure like raised beds. You can also put bales on a patio.”

Don’t Forget Your Front Yard

If you have more space or sun out front, plant your food garden there. You may even want to put up signs in the garden so people can harvest some of your prolific edibles like mint or chives.

How to Handle Pests

Your edible garden can be an outdoor buffet for local wildlife, and many homeowners prefer not to spread pesticides. 

Squirrels and deer can get into all sorts of spaces unless you physically exclude them. Do this with wire mesh when you’re gardening on a smaller scale. But sometimes you just have to accept that you’re going to share, so grow things like currents, cherry tomatoes or smaller fruits that are really prolific. This way, there’s lots for you, and for the birds, squirrels and deer.

No Yard? No Problem!

Even if you don’t have a yard, patio or balcony, you can still grow food on a windowsill. 

If live in an apartment or a condo without a yard you may think you can’t grow food, but you can. You can grow microgreens: Just use a pie plate, add some potting soil and dried peas from the grocery store and grow them into little edible green pea sprouts. Or get a sprouting jar from your local health food store. 

Whether you are feeding your family or the community, take time to plant edibles this season.