Not to forget the people of Haiti

… who still need to recover and rebuild after the devastating earthquake early this year. Activists are calling for cancellation of Haiti’s debts, which include amounts owed to the Inter-American Developmental Bank, Venezuela, and the International Monetary Fund. As well, they are calling for a long-range vision which will help the country effectively rebuild its infrastructure.

David Meltzer thinks Haitians must be empowered to take ownership in order to help themselves. “You must listen to the community, see what the people need, and see how they can contribute. You can’t come in and tell everyone what to do and how to rebuild,” Meltzer added. We must hope that internal conflict or anger against outsiders will not further weaken Haiti.

	Pre-Earthquake Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Representative Meeks championed Haiti’s need for debt cancellation. “We need to free up resources and be prepared for the long haul,” Meeks explained. “We need careful coordination between governmental and non-governmental organizations focusing on Haiti. We want to remind everyone of what the effort was to rebuild Europe after World War II. It takes coordinated aid and development.”

from “The Fate of Haiti Post-Earthquake: Can Debt Cancellation Help an Impoverished Nation to Rebuild?” – PR.com

infrequent posting for a while …

My work schedule has gone a little crazy lately, with lots of overtime – too much work and not enough people.  So my blogging is going to be considerably slower than usual, as I’m not getting much of a chance / not having enough energy to get  on the computer for a post.

However, I’m working on an exciting new animal rights silk screen design, which I’ll be sure to share once I’m finished.  And I’ve been reading some great, interesting articles about the history of the Doukhobors in Canada (a Russian sect whose members continue a tradition of pacifism and vegetarianism which has lasted for centuries, despite persecution).  I’ll try to share some of this information when I can.

Meanwhile -

Ever since the bears went into hibernation, I’ve been walking to work.  It takes ten minutes to walk through the forest to get to main street, and another twenty to get to the bakery.  Where I am, the world is wrapped in snow.  All is hush and muffle and hibernation.  The ones who don’t hibernate – the chickadees, the squirrels and the rabbits – are living out the dramas of their tiny lives in the snow, and I see their tracks as I walk along.  I feel my life is a tiny drama too, against the cold and the snow and the hard stars in the sky.  A small particle of consciousness passing through.

It has been good to be away from the city.  A friend once said that some cities welcome you in, while others spit you out.  And while there are indeed many good things about Victoria, it was a place that ’spit me out’ over the course of the last few years, and I was glad to leave.  Now I can see that there are a few things I will miss.  Yet life has moved forward so fast here, and I am glad to be here.  I am thousands of kilometers closer to my dream (of starting an organic farm).

Here is the countryside where I will eventually make my home:

This is what I’m waiting for, and working for, and dreaming of – the organic farm: the house we will build, the crops we will grow, the community we will create.  It’s what I use to motivate myself when things are awful at work (which is frequently).  It’s the biggest goal I’ve ever had in my life and I’ll be damned if I don’t see it through.

Screen-printing in the basement

I found myself in the basement yesterday, making a batch of screen-prints.  A friend of a friend wanted one, and I didn’t have any in stock.  So – time to get out the art supplies and get my hands dirty!

I thought I would take a few photos to demonstrate the process.  I still had the screen-print which I made earlier, and just needed to print copies from it.  First, I cut some second-hand fabric into pieces big enough to print two images on, with wide margins all around each image (which is important – margins are useful for framing and for sewing patches with, and too small a margin is hard to work with and less professional looking).

I don’t have a squeegee, so I use a firm piece of cardboard cut to size (above) which I use to scrape the screen-printing ink across the screen.  I lay the screen print (the embroidery hoop covered in ink) centred in the middle of the fabric, and glob a small amount of ink below the image, then scrape the ink as evenly as possible across the screen so that it is pushed through to the fabric below.

One normally uses a spoon, but today I just used a small piece of plastic to transfer the screen printing ink from container to screen.

The reason I made two images per piece of fabric was so that I could fold them in the middle and hang them from a piece of string to dry.  They are out of the way and safe from having cats step across the wet ink!

Plus I liked how the prints looked, hanging from the ceiling.  They reminded me of prayer flags – and indeed, the message printed on them is a sort of prayer.  A wish for prosperous cultivation of the earth in a sane and respectful manner, a wish for the planting of “seeds of peace” – which vegan-organic farming cultivates.

Peace and Carrots: a tiny cookbook

For the holidays this year, I made a tiny cookbook for members of my immediate family, and a few close friends.  It was 12 pages – two-and-a-half 8 1/2 x 11 inch sheets folded in quarters.  I included my favorite vegan recipes, mostly from How it all Vegan and from Dining with Friends.  As well, I put in a couple of my own recipes – a lovely Shepherd’s Pie, a delicious Squash Soup, and an adaptation of a lemon cake recipe that includes a sugar-lemon syrup spread between the layers and a “buttercream” frosting.

This is the front page:

And here’s one of the layout pages, ready to photocopy.  If you haven’t done this sort of thing before, it might be confusing – but the point of laying it out like that is so that the sheet can be photocopied doublesided, then folded and cut to make properly formatted booklet sheets.  Okay that’s not a great explanation.  See here for a diagram of this layout, and for some good ‘zine-making tips (oh yes, this would qualify as a ‘zine!)

I’m so used to this process that once I decided to make it, it didn’t take long to get my pages written out and formatted into place.  The most difficult part was getting it photocopied: the French/English barrier was only the start of my frustrations, since the store staff were unfamiliar with their new copy machine and with the task of double-siding.  If I had been able to use the machine myself, it would have taken three minutes; instead it took almost thirty.  At any rate, I ended up with almost exactly what I had wanted … without getting the margins too cut off (which would have been easier if the paper had not been put in the machine crooked).  A good time for non-violent communication skills – to convey the notion that I wasn’t paying for the wrecked copies!  At any rate, we all left with smiles and “Joyeux Noel”s, so it turned out o.k.  And the booklet was good enough to send to my friends and family.  I’ve been spoiled by access to do-it-yourself photocopy machines, apparently!

So that was my only Christmas gift that I gave last year … apart from some cookies I mailed to my grandma.  I think my family doesn’t mind my home-grown efforts, and I certainly appreciate not having to buy gifts of questionable merit – they all have enough material goods, and so do I.  And this way, maybe they’ll try some vegan recipes; or at least know what to make for me when I visit!

Here is the inscription I wrote in the front of the booklet:

Here are some favorite vegan recipes I wanted to share with you.  Most are from cookbooks but a few are my own creation.  I like them because they are simple, delicious, inexpensive and healthy.  Wherever possible, please make them with local organic produce and fairly-traded imported ingredients.

I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as I do.  Have a delicious and delightful year in 2010!

finding voice …

So, along with wanting to start up a vegan-organic farm here, I think I moved to Quebec to get an attitude … and find my voice.

Like many who are concerned about the treatment of animals and the environment, I’m a sensitive person.  My shyness has often gotten in the way of being a vocal advocate.  I spent my teenage years apologizing for my vegetarianism, as if it were some sort of inconvenience for others to avoid feeding me meat, and then when I became vegan I continued for a while with this same apologetic attitude.  As well, I was raised to see confrontation as negative and emotionally upsetting, so it’s been my habit to avoid debates and arguments in general – including those which address important issues of ecology and animal rights.  While I feel I have been contributing to these spheres through my writing and my art, I have found fault with my inability to deal face-to-face with people in confrontational or even educational situations.  But that’s starting to change.

The concept of nonviolent communication has been incredibly useful to me: it models ways of negotiating conflict with honesty, respect, and dignity for all parties.  I’m learning how to honour my own anger or hurt feelings by actually talking to the person who has affected me, in clear language that expresses my feelings and needs without blaming or attacking the other person.  It sounds so obvious, but it’s been such a revelation for me.  And learning to deal with small, day-to-day confrontations at work and at home has given me more confidence and courage to deal with bigger issues in a positive way.

So then the other day at work, a francophone asked me why I am vegan.  I said that I would love to answer, but it would be too difficult for me to say it in French.  They told me to say it in English.  So, to help the non-native English speaker, I took a moment, and then said the clearest, simplest, most concise summary of why I am vegan that I could think of:

“For the animals.  Not to kill them, or to use them.”

This point was accepted, and the conversation moved on.  But I was extremely happy to be able to put in words so clearly what has been in my head and my heart for so long.  And to be able to express such thoughts in the context of a rural, meat-centred mindset.  I mean, I work with people who are bow-hunters.  No one thinks twice about taking the lives of free-living animals who live near us in the forests we have clearcut, re-cut and then invaded with houses.  Lots of people wear fluffy fur hats without a second thought.  I even saw a dead skinned fox, tail and all, on someone’s head – and they were clearly proud of such decoration.

It’s an interesting challenge to live here and think of how to raise awareness of these issues – in a language that I wasn’t born into.  But I feel I’m making a start, now.  Finally.

And it’s not too late.  Though I do feel the urgency of being on the cusp of the sixth great extinction known to the world, this one caused by humans; the urgency of trying to hold on to our habitats, the habitats of land-dwelling creatures threatened by climate change; the urgency of trying to put the brakes on this free-wheeling rampage we have engaged in in the name of progress and capitalism.  And raising voice is vital.  I don’t want to look back and say I did nothing to try to stop what was coming.  I mean, I think we as a species will survive, and of course the world will go on – but what sort of world will it be without polar bears and tigers, without orangutans or pandas, without the Maldives or Tuvalu or New Orleans?

Test Tube Meat is Bullshit

There’s a strange buzz going around the technologically-addicted, affluent West: people are excited about “in vitro meat,” the idea that flesh could be “ethically” eaten if it were grown in a laboratory.  The idea has even gotten a publicity group (I won’t call them an animal rights organization) in a flap: PETA has offered $1 million to whoever first perfects the technology.

This is very, very strange stuff.  Some are so cut off from material realities that they are willing to look to technology for new solutions, even where there isn’t a problem in the first place.  We are being sold the concept of test-tube meat as if it were an ethically-neutral solution to the problem of animal exploitation and death raised by the call to veganism.  (There isn’t a problem because it’s easy to not ask for an animal’s exploitation or death, simply by not eating or using products made from them).

But what is forgotten is that test-tube meat is not alchemy.  Something can’t be made from nothing.  Test-tube meat will still require nutrients to “grow” the tissues.  It will also require complicated and expensive set-ups for tissue cultivation: laboratories with sterile equipment, autoclaves, chemical cleaning agents, stainless steel and glass, particulate filters, and all that is involved with such high technology.  None of this is cheap.  None of this is environmentally friendly.  None of this is ethically pure.

Test tube meat won’t be cheap.  It’s not a solution to world hunger.  It will be another lifestyle choice of the rich and affluent, who would pride themselves on their ‘purity.’  Meanwhile, people still starve in the streets, the ghettos, the villages, and soil keeps eroding under the tractor tires of wasteful industrial farming.  We could be joining efforts to plant trees in arid regions, helping them retain groundwater and control desertification.  We could be promoting careful farming methods that promote diverse seed stocks, natural resistance to pests and diseases, organic practices and permaculture techniques that will insure that there are plants and seeds for future generations.  Instead, we waste our energies on foolish whimsies like laboratory-grown meat.

Apart from no longer being able to stomach fatty, dense animal flesh, and no longer desiring it, I don’t want test tube meat because I don’t think it makes any sense morally or practically to “grow” food in a laboratory.  What makes sense is to GROW food in the SOIL.  Walnut trees produce two tons or more per acre of protein- and omega-3- rich food; cattle can only be grazed at a rate of one cow per acre.  (While test-tube meat is supposed to improve the rate of this inefficiency, it is still inefficient – and wasteful).  And trees generously provide shade, erosion control, beauty, wildlife habitat, and fuel and wood for future generations.  A quarter-cup of almonds has more protein than an egg, and more calcium than a quarter cup of milk (see chart).

I want my minerals, vitamins, carbohydrates, proteins, fats, anti-oxidants from a garden, direct from the earth.  That’s the only place they come from, anyways.  Coming from an animal, or from a laboratory, means those nutrients have been filtered up the food chain, with subsequent loss of efficiency.

And it’s blind faith in the goodness of increased technology that is helping to destroy the one habitat we have, the one habitat all creatures share.  What about, for once, exercising restraint.  Saying, “Just because we have the technology, doesn’t mean we should use it.  Just because something can be done, doesn’t mean we have the right to do it.”

Test-tube meat is no solution.  The solution is to stop eating meat and using animal products.  The solution is to change the foolish mind-set that would even lead to the concept of laboratory-grown ‘food’: the same mind-set that has led us towards what many predict will shortly be an ecological collapse, and what has already been an utter devastation of species, habitats, and peoples and cultures all over the world.

The solution is stop using fossil fuels and pumping CO2 and pollution into the environment.  Stop enslaving the rest of the world, its peoples and its creatures and its habitats, for our wants and needs.  Get over ourselves, and start addressing how to live in low-impact relationship with the biosphere, instead of lording over it.  Use appropriate technology – enough to satisfy our needs, not more.  Eat nutritious food, not animals.  Learn how to plant food gardens, especially perennials.  Plant trees.  Harvest rainwater.  Help others.  Be modest and careful with the only home we have.

ack – a hack

Well, I’m the unwitting victim of some sort of virus, through Twitter of all things.  I clicked on an direct message from a trusted connection, which led me to a website with nothing on it.  Next thing I know the computer is having trouble booting up – something to do with the CPU.  Turns out, my contact was unwittingly sending ’spam’ e-mail as they themselves had been infected with a virus.

Anyways, all that is to say – well – first of all, apparently Twitter can host viruses and hacking – and secondly, I don’t really have time to write much as I’m trying to figure this computer thing out and fix it.

But in the meantime, here’s a few links to cool people I have encountered, thanks to Twitter:

Catherine Burt – In-A-Gadda-Da Vegan blog

Ed Coffin – Eating Consciously blog

Enjoy the words of these thoughtful people!

A year of blogging

Well, I’ve been blogging for exactly a year now, as my first post was this date last November.  So, I have cause to reflect a little.  I’d say it’s going well so far, the blogging project – though I’m still a little puzzled about how to approach it.  How personal do I make this blog?  How much theory, and history, and how much narrative?  I’d say so far I’ve struck an uneasy balance – I feel the blog moves wildly between subjects with little continuity except my writing style.  Is that acceptable?  I’m not sure.  But I’m constantly refining what I want to talk about, what my grasp on animal rights is, and how I want to apply it.  I’d say that the blog helps those things move along.  The more I’m forced to write, the more I try to wrap my head around an issue, the more I develop my own understanding and way of writing about it.

There are certainly a lot of topics I would love to get more in-depth about on this blog.  So much could still be said about non-violence, about feminism, about anti-racism and issues of poverty.  And about free-living animals and how we impact them – something which many animal advocacy groups miss.  Ever heard PETA say one word about free-living animals and our impact on their lives, their habitats?  I haven’t.  It’s all one great circus about advertisements, KFC, celebrities, and undercover factory farm expose.  On the other hand, there are organizations like the revered World Wildlife Fund, which takes no position against whaling or the seal kill in Canada and which supports hunting animals.  I loved the WWF when I was a child and it’s heartbreaking to know that they don’t actually care enough about animals to speak out unequivocally against them being killed, even for sport.  So – yet another reason I support Friends of Animals, as they are consistent advocates for the rights of free-living animals, and they don’t waver from their position that we should stop interfering in the lives of animals.

What I’m most proud of in the year of blogging?  I would say, my in-depth research about the seal kill in Canada, which I wrote up in article format after making a speech at a chilly, rainy demonstration in Victoria.  I’m proud of my article about vegan-organic farming, which got listed in a Denman Island website on the same subject.  And I’m happy to have written about “silk” screening, vegan style, as that brings hits daily to my blog from people searching the internet about D.I.Y. silk screen printing.  Finally, I’m proud of having spoken out against Canada’s visa restrictions against Mexico and Czech Republic visitors.  The comments I’ve received on that post indicate that I’ve reached some people who it’s affected, and I’m happy to show solidarity and welcome – Canada is NOT a xenophobic country, and it’s hypocritical to try to close the doors on new immigrants seeing as we’re all immigrant squatters on indigenous territories.

Where to go from here?  I’d like to focus much more on the history aspect which I occasionally touch on.  I think it’s interesting that vegetarianism has been with us so long – before the 19th century, abstainers from animal products were called “Pythagoreans” after the famous mathematician, whose school in 6th century BC Croton was one of the first to accept women students.  The idea that vegetarianism has been around for so long and in so many cultures counteracts the accusations of trendiness, or twentieth-century invention, or granola-crunching hippyness that vegetarianism is so often slapped with, by people who are averse to considering the ethical reasons for not harming or using animals.  Resurrecting vegetarian history can go a long ways towards asserting its ‘legitimacy’ as a philosophy and practice that has reverberated through time and permeated the boundaries of cultures.

don’t just Buy Nothing today …

Well it’s that whole Buy Nothing Day today, I believe.  The Friday one month before Christmas, where the whole North American continent is supposed to go nuts with Christmas spending.  Eventually some people got together and said to themselves, “This is wasteful and excessive.  Let’s boycott this!”  And the Buy Nothing Day movement was born.  Which is fine and good, except that it’s kind of … insulting for people who don’t have money in the first place, and who would love to be able to buy anything.  Saying, “I have the choice to boycott non-essential consumer spending for one day” doesn’t fully recognize the situation of rich and poor, of class divides, of global North consuming the global South.

Yet it’s a start, and this is why: when you buy cheap consumer goods, you are sending most of the profit to the middleman.  The money gets spread out along the line: there’s costs for production, packaging, shipping, marketing, warehousing, distributing, labeling, managing and so on; and at every step, some of it pays workers and costs, but the rest is taken for profit by the owners.  So what’s the deal on the other end of that product?  Somewhere there is a person who is getting paid pennies, or less than pennies, to produce something that costs dollars.  Your money disappears, filtered up, up, up through the layers, lining the wallets of CEO’s and business owners, while somewhere else in the world, someone’s getting screwed.  There’s someone on a production line, many someones, and their days are hell.

I think about this often right now, as I’ve been moved temporarily to a different part of the bakery, to accommodate the ‘low season’ slump: I’m packaging cakes on a production line.  My days are hell, and boring, and repetitive, and a strain on my back and on my hands.  I feel unimaginative, dull, a part of a machine, a number.  I like to complain.  And yet, I look at the plastic packaging that we put the cakes in, and I think – somewhere in the world, there is someone else working in that plastics manufacturing plant.  Along with all the other complaints I have about my job, they are working in dangerous conditions, being exposed to noxious fumes, and being paid a fraction of what I make.  And possibly being exposed to overt racism and intimidation on the job, and being punished if they’re too slow, like having their lunch break taken away from them.  And this is the situation for millions of workers all over the world right now.

So … all this spending that’s encouraged in the wake of the holiday season … well I’m not sure people would spend so much on so many unnecessary things, if they realized the cost that is paid at the other end of the line.  The cost of good people’s time, and energy, and lives, in exchange for cheap plastics and other commodities that really, we could do well without.  And that’s just the human cost – not to mention the environmental costs of production, shipping, wastage, packaging.

It’s not to blame all the evils of the world on the consumers.  There are many, many businesses to blame for all that is wrong – and the worst is how successful they are at hiding all that happens all along the production line, and how infrequently they are held accountable for it by governments.  How many labor laws they break, and rivers they pollute, and communities they wring dry just for the sake of a dirty profit, and how infrequently that is made public knowledge, let alone punished.  Yet it also starts with those who willingly support such businesses – the consumer is certainly not blameless for not knowing (it’s not an excuse legally to “not know” you were breaking the law, either!)  And also, I see the solution as coming from citizens, not from corporations.  We can end this, we can change this, even if the big bosses never, ever change their tunes.  We can drown them out, run them out of business, just not give them our money.  And that’s basically the tune of Buy Nothing Day that I dig: empowerment for the people.

Please, don’t just Buy Nothing for one day.  Don’t buy it if you don’t need it, period.  Don’t buy it pre-made if you can buy the ingredients and make it yourself, either – it’s almost always cheaper and better that way.  And support local farmers, local artisans; people making quality, well-made products out of durable, ethical (for people and animals), environmental materials.  Join a local exchange trading system (LETS) where you can trade your time and skills with others in the community for mutual benefit.  And be willing to pay more for union-made goods, where you need them.  Because we can’t fix what’s wrong at the end of the line unless we’re willing to make ethical, enduring systems of trade and barter that work on this end of the line, and all the way along it.  There’s a long way to go … But we’re not consumers, we’re human beings.  Let’s live that way.

Many of us are active in creating and maintaining a sense of community amongst our friends and neighbours. But more and more our hands seem to be tied: the world is in serious trouble, both ecologically and economically. Few people would argue with this, but how many would recognise a major cause of our problems? We assert that a major problem, perhaps the major problem, lies in conventional money and the form that it takes.

Every modern community depends on the flow of national currency through its internal economy. The money swirls in and it rushes out again. Money flows into the community from exports, visitors and government spending. It flows out on imports, travel and taxes.

When local industry loses an export market, when fewer visitors arrive or when governments cut spending, the money that leaves is not replaced.

As the amount of money circulating in the community falls, so does the level of trading. Business declines and people lose jobs, not because they have nothing to offer, but because there is not enough money to go around.

In the contest for a share of this limited supply, people work in ways that damage their own health, the environment and the well-being of the community.

People are prepared to do almost anything for money because they need it to take part in the game. This is the source of the problem, since money, by virtue of its very structure, is scarce and hard to come by.

There are three reasons for this:

• there is only so much in circulation;
• it can go virtually anywhere, and so it does;
• you can’t issue it yourself.

All over the world communities suffer from a shortage of money, simply because there is only so much of it, it’s gone elsewhere and they can’t print their own.

When you think about it, this situation is nonsensical. Money is merely a means of exchange, a set of tickets, a number in your bank account. It has no value in itself – you can’t eat it, wear it or build anything with it.

It is a measure of value, like an inch measures length or a ton measures weight . There need never be a shortage of the measure.

Imagine a carpenter not working because he has run out of inches!

- The LETSystem Design Manual

mouse prevention, vegan style

So, living in a rural setting has its drawbacks.  And we have discovered a bit of a mouse problem: they have been nesting beside the house, within the basement walls, and also in a storage shed/art studio in the yard.  Clearly, I don’t want to kill the mice.  They are doing their own thing, and have found access to warm environs which are very convenient for them.  It’s not their fault that humans have gone and built such tempting shelters on the land; otherwise, they would hole up in a hollow log or dig their little tunnels in the forest, disturbing no-one.

So I’m on a mission to find humane ways of REPELLING – not killing – the mice.  So far, only one has died, by accident: it climbed into a batch of bread dough that I left downstairs near the wood heater to proof overnight.  It would have lifted the lid, climbed in, and drowned in the dough.  It was a very awful thing to find the next day.  Selfishly, I was sad for the loss of the bread dough as much as the death of the mouse.  But at least it alerted us to the problem of mouse-human space conflict, and we can work to find a solution.

Anyways, to prevent tragedies of this nature, I’m researching natural rodent deterrents.  So far, the most promising seems to be the use of peppermint oil, which they find repellant.  The oil is dripped onto cotton balls and the balls are dispersed wherever the mice want to nest.  But don’t use peppermint extract, because they’ll laugh and then poop on it, like they did to me.

Further, the leavings of their natural predators can prove daunting to mice.  I’ll be raiding the litter box of the long-tailed cat who lives with us, to disperse a few nuggets beneath the art studio/shed.  Doesn’t seem like a recommended practice for indoors!  On a related note, there are ‘mice deterrents’ for sale which are ‘organic’ and ‘non-toxic’ – being made of urine from wild cats or foxes.  But this isn’t really a good option if what you’re looking for is something that’s humane to animals – while it doesn’t involve killing mice, it does involve either killing or holding captive the wild cats and foxes for the sake of taking their urine!

Here are some simple steps to insure that mice aren’t invading your habitat:

1. Make sure your building is sound.  Any crack or crevice can serve as an entry point.  If mice are getting into your building, shore up, repair, patch, and seal the exterior of your house so that they don’t have an easy access point.  If your house is at the point where rodents are finding entry, maybe thoughts of renovation are in order.

2. Careful storage of food.  Mice are attracted not only to warm spaces but also to smells of food.  Make sure all food is properly stored, with tight-fitting lids, in plastic, metal, or glass containers.  Ideally, food should be stored in areas where humans are frequently present – mice are more hesitant to venture into high-traffic areas.

3. Repellents.  I’ll report back on the success of the mint oil and cat leavings. There are other options like sonar emitters, which are small devices plugged in to walls which pulse out tones inaudible to humans, but supposedly intolerable to rodents.  We had no success with these devices in a mountain cabin in British Columbia, but maybe there are better brands, or better places to put them.

4. Humane traps, like that tube – Havahart I think it’s called.  Not the best option – where are you going to relocate the mice?  Are they going to come back?  Are they going to become someone else’s problem?  Unless you sort through steps 1 and 2, step 4 isn’t going to get you very far, I think.  Plus it’s more work for you.

5. Landscaping.  Foundation plantings of mint around the house are reportedly helpful.  I will certainly try this with my own house.  Plus you’ll have delicious mint to enjoy.  But remember that mint is a plant that can overtake whole gardens – box it in with something so its roots can’t spread, unless you love it enough to want it everywhere!