Love me a Variety Pack post as it gives me a chance to not only catch up on sharing smaller projects about the house but also cover tidbits, tips, and fun snippets.
So today we have a Variety Pack post!
Let's hop to it!
First, a gardening tip on, and you're not gonna believe how painless this is, powdery mildew.
Last year my poor peonies got it bad.  Like real bad.  Scary bad.  I couldn't get out there for a variety pack of reasons to remedy the situation.  I thought I had killed both of my precious precious peony babies.
I ran through zillions of tips online like spray with this, spray with that, mix this, eh chemical that, no, do this do that and nothing worked.  Short of whipping out the major chemicals which I did not want to do.  Our yard is chemical-free. Over the winter I was so that panicked and distraught, yes all winter, that I did yet more online poking around, stumbling upon The Most Simple trick of all:  spray your peony bushes with a bit of water every few days, once a week or so.
What"!
I know, right"!  I thought c'mon, how could something that simple be true.  Guess what"  It is.  Completely totally utterly true.
Freshly sprayed!Just a light spray with water every so often is enough to fend off that damn powdery mildew.  What a monster tip.  I want to hug whoever it was who shared it.  
My peony bushes are so happy this year, big and bright green with zero powdery...