Took a short walk today because it's almost the start of summer and it'll soon be over 100F here consistently. Saw some pretty neat shit before the rain today. We were getting ate by mosquitos and also stumbled upon a threesome in the woods. I wish I'd gotten better pics of the milk thistles so I could post them here but I did find some consolida ajacis amongst the wild carrot and coneflowers.

I got into a really long conversation with some people about this on Reddit so I figured I'd do a full write up.

There were a lot of suggestions in the thread like honey, garlic, wine, onions and so on but that's using knowledge of the time.

Plus honey was really expensive and a very seasonal item.

You can way more easily turn wood ash into lye/strong base, use that as a bleach to disinfect cloths, make soaps, and clean working surfaces and it'll be way more effective than the poultices and home remedies you're thinking of in your head currently.

The general process would be: burn hardwoods to create ashes, sift the ashes so it's all an even texture, wash the ashes in copious amounts of charcoal filtered, boiled, and settled water (use more water than ashes as to not give yourself lye burns) then filter through a cloth to get the non dissolved particulates out.

You can then boil off the water to get a powder and mix it in measured proportions to get a highly diluted bleach analog and use it in whatever soap making or cleaning processes you want.

Find tree nuts like acorns to press into usable oil, or barter for grain oils and animal fats to make soaps. Buy some vinegar to use as a direct antiseptic (better than nothing), wax to impregnate cloths for water resistant bandages/wound sealant, and some copper plates or pans so that you avoid having your gauzes, packings, and bandages touching dirty porous surfaces and you're practically off to the races.

I can go into more depth about actually how to make the soap, make rudimentary pH testing strips, and all that but this post is already getting long.

If you have some input I'd love to read it!

Can you tell I love spring?

These are a set of pics I took last year with my analog night vision (literally a vacuum tube, I can go on a rant about that if you want, just ask me about it). They're from around 0200-0400ish during the summer.

All of my friends tell me they feel like something out of the Twilight Zone with how desolate the vibes are but I think it feels oddly comforting.

These ones are from various days this spring. It was honestly very refreshing to see people out and about enjoying the nature.