Citrus Cleaner

One of the forum members on Down to Earth Forum posted a wonderful recipe for citrus cleaner.  It is so simple to make and yet another way to clean our homes with one less commercial cleaner.  Take a jar and fill it 3/4 of the way full with white vinegar.  Then you take the outer skins of any citrus fruit, no pulp... a vegetable peeler works best for this, the pulp tends to turn brown says some of the ladies on the forum.  I used orange skins and put them in the vinegar for about a month giving the vinegar time to draw out all the wonderful oils in the skins.  Then  you discard the skins or compost them leaving wonderfully smelling cleanser that you combine 1/2 and 1/2 with either water or vinegar in a spray bottle  for cleaning your home.

The second jar you see is a Rosemary tea that I am trying that another forum member posted for cleaning your floors.  I have a lovely Rosemary plant that I cut about 8, 6-7" stems from and steeped them in 4 cups of water on the stove top.  Then I allowed them to sit overnight and poured this beautiful ruby red tea in a jar to use in my mop water.  Our forum member said it has wonderful cleaning properties and she uses about two cups in her mop water.  I am not sure how well or how long it keeps so I am experimenting.  This is the beautiful Rosemary I took the cutting from.

I used to have an herb garden but it didn't do very well.  Then I read to plant your herbs in among your flowers and I tried it with this Rosemary and an Oregano plant.  The Oregano didn't make it but the Rosemary is thriving.  I plan on tucking in more herbs this summer into the flower gardens.  It's very convenient for me to run outside and pick what I want to add to our dinner dish.

This photo I captured for fun.  I just love the way this turned out.  While visiting a friend I captured these wildflowers growing around an old truck in the pasture.  I love the contrast of the blue truck against the greens and yellows.

Thank you again to all who are visiting my blog and to those that have joined thank you as well.  I really enjoy writing and sharing things with you and I love visiting the blogs of those who join mine as well.  There are so many talented and wonderful people in this world!