In an unofficial contest, in which hydrogen peroxide, vinegar and baking soda competed for the coveted “most uses” award, vinegar won. Indeed, vinegar’s margin of victory was greater than that of most of the recent primary winners: vinegar scored a stunning 131, compared to baking soda’s 75, and hydrogen peroxide’s paltry 19.

Among the very many virtues of these household products are potency in treating  insect bites, highlighting hair, clearing sinuses, discouraging garden pests, brightening teeth and eliminating bad breath. All three are prized for stain removal capacity. Only hydrogen peroxide disinfects wounds and helps you go blonde.

Baking soda, sprinkled generously around the perimeter of a vegetable garden will ward off varmints like woodchucks — a new idea for this year and easier than a neighbor’s method of “marking the territory.”

Way out front in the number of uses, vinegar alone of the three products can wipe out mold and kill weeds. Which kind of vinegar is most effective in weed killing? “Any kind,” responded a master gardener at Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth, N.H. “I use red wine vinegar myself, but that’s because I’m Italian.”

Using simple, old-fashioned household products in place of toxic weed killers and bug sprays, highlighting shampooed hair with vinegar, replacing commercial stain removers with baking soda or hydrogen peroxide, all of these “green ways” can make you feel better.

Making words count

For years and years and years now, the force of language has been weakening. A solemn newscaster will call a tsunami “really scary.” Halloween masks and ghost stories are scary. Volcanic ash and smoke, roadside bombs, swine flu pandemics aren’t merely scary. They’re terrifying, shocking, menacing, horrific, frightening, but not scary.

Then there’s the Gulf oil “spill.” Milk can spill. A small child may have a spill from her trike. Tears spill over. “Spill” doesn’t fairly describe what’s going on in the Gulf of Mexico.

Counting bats

Who would count bats?! A wildlife research biologist, that’s who. Why? Because the health of the bat population is an indicator of the ecology’s health. And as we’ve been talking matters green and environmental, it’s  fairly well known that River Valley bats reside in abandoned mines near Whitecap Mountain and in the working forests of the Concord River acreage in Milton Plantation, Rumford, and Woodstock.

Bats belong on the “scary” list unless they’re rabid, in which case up they go to “frightening.” We’ll count the days till the Mahoosuc Land Trust’s Local Knowledge series presents wildlife biologist Dave Yates at the Rumford Library. That program will take place next winter after Dave has counted our bats.

Linda Farr Macgregor is a freelance writer; contact her: [email protected]