Jay Angler

I don't know Pearl - maybe we're getting too 'non-inclusive' here. I'm sure there's at least 1000 'crazy plant men' on permies too!

But you definitely need that as a bumper sticker for your truck!

Tereza Okava wrote:

Woohoo, scientific vindication. I love my plants. And like I always say, it is cheaper than therapy.

And you talk to them regularly, right? And get upset when someone criticizes them or, heaven forbid, accuses them of being, "an invasive weed that's taking over"? And object when people tell you plants aren't sentient (they're just slow about it and don't speak human)? Plant lovers unite!

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:

I think moss and moss gardens are beautiful too! Did you know we have a moss art thread? https://permies.com/t/13614/sculpture/art/Moss-art
It's an old enough thread that some of the picture links are broken but I think there's enough remaining as inspiration for you.

I *adore* that thread. I so wish I had the time to do that sort of art, but I'm too busy trying to get edible things growing on my shady property and with trying to stop Himalayan Blackberry from taking over faster than I can discourage it. I wish moss would stop it! At least its berries taste good.

I wonder if I could make a hanging moss ball where it would catch enough drips from dew on the roof in our summer drought season that it would stay alive? That would be a small enough project that I'd be able to sneak in a little time to experiment with it. Thank you for inspiring me!

No one's mentioned that they're great for reading in bed. Why have to *hold* a flashlight under the covers when you can just tilt your head just right?

I do recall the kids playing flash-light tag in the dark a few times and we didn't even loose any kid permanently!

And who says I can't use it to shine more light on the spot I'm sewing when my sewing machine light just doesn't seem bright enough.

One can never have too many headlamps - one on the arm of the bedroom chair in case their's a power failure, one in my pack so I can see to walk down the hill from the car in the dark, and of coarse one in the garage so we can grab it if there's a commotion outside and we need to see what critter's trying to eat my ducks!

Unfortunately, my boys weren't into dancing.

Glad that science backs up the fact that when the kids were little, an hour in the garden by myself seemed make me much better able to cope with their shenanigans.

I know that different types of plants have been studied to determine which specific pollutants they remove from the air. (For example, the spider plant is known to suck up formaldehyde.) I wonder if the type of moss matters and by how much?

Since moss often does well in the shade, this seems like it would do well inside and maybe help "sick building syndrome"?

I admit I've loved moss ever seeing a beautiful moss garden in Japan. It was like a thick carpet compared to what North American's prized as "lawn" at the time. I would love to have an outbuilding with a moss roof and walls. That's got me thinking... dangerous thing that!

Ginny Markee wrote:

Okay, I understand the IP isn't "supposed" to be for canning, but like you, I see the sense in it, instead of using a water bath canner.

There certainly seem to be people using it for water bath canning. I would make sure that the jars were held off the bottom using a thick cloth or a metal rack which I always do when using my big pot to water bath can.

To be precise,  they seem to accept "water bath canning" but not "pressure canning". The newest "Max" model may be able to, but that doesn't help me. The issue seems to be that *pressure* canning is looking for 15 PSI and the InstantPot is only pressurizing to 11 PSI. Another comment I read was that the InstantPot doesn't get all the air out before sealing - one of the instructions on my big pressure cooker is that you're supposed to let the steam flow for 7 minutes before putting the weight on. A solution for that might be to leave it in the 'vent' position until there's plenty of steam coming out, and then switch it to the pressure cooker mode.

Another issue that kept being mentioned is that there's no way to know what temperature the InstantPot's getting up to. Pressure canners normally use a "weight" or a gauge so you can tell if it's up to pressure or not. So there may be no way to tell if an InstantPot's kept the water up to "boiling" for the proper time to preserve following a water bath recipe. On a stove I can tell by the steam rising! That said, I think this is an area where time and experience will give people confidence, but to begin with, it seems like we should start with safer rather than riskier recipes.

The whole issue of temperature is complicated. For example there are certain foods which I want to "pasteurize" by water bath canning at a lower temperature for a longer time - since I can't control the InstantPot's temperature, I'll have to use the large pot I've used for that job in the past. I use an meat thermometer to get the ideal temperature, but it's definitely a nuisance trying to keep it in the narrow range it needs to be in.

This whole subject is further complicated because everyone's scared that if someone "thinks" they've followed instructions and gets sick, lawsuits get threatened or even just bad publicity, regardless of whether it's justified or not. When I consider what people did a generation ago, we're far fussier now. Some of that may be justified, but some of it seems to me to be just scare tactics so that everyone will by commercial "safe" food, regardless of the noticeable failures that regularly occur!

@Rene Nijstad - the sentence above, is the first sentence of a brand new story, so please be brave and add 10 words that will lead on from it and we'll see where it takes us! Plot is the least of our worries with so many people contributing. Here it is again:

Dreaming of spring, I wondered up my path trying to...

Excellent! The only thing it's missing is the bit about "stretching" and "reaching" while getting this workout. Hmm... also missed my pole saw. That's a rare version of zoomba to bird music.

I just read Small Homes: the right size  by Lloyd Kahn. Well, mostly read - it is a picture book after all! Almost all the featured houses were between 400 and 1200 square feet and there are lots of ideas about efficient layout and efficient use of space.