I had to look up vodka as room freshener. It's a modest amount of vodka. From ehow.com: Things You'll Need Spray bottle 1 teaspoon essential oil 1/4 cup unflavored vodka 3 1/2 cups filtered water Instructions 1 Clean out a spray bottle with hot water. Make sure it's absolutely clean, or else the residue of the previous contents may affect the scent of the room spray. One effective method to get rid of a scent in a previously used bottle is to allow some vinegar mixed with water to sit in the bottle overnight. Use one part vinegar to one part water. 2 In a small bowl, mix the essential oil and the vodka using a wire whisk or fork. The vodka acts as an emulsifier so that the water and oil blend together. 3 Pour the oil and vodka mixture into your spray bottle. Add the water to the mixture and shake vigorously. Now you're ready to freshen your room. Remember to shake the mixture each time you use the spray.

I have quad outlets everywhere. I did them anywhere I d@mn well pleased in the kitchen, too. I can't tell you how many people said I didn't need them. Until I reminded them that electrical needs of the 30s and 40s changed dramatically in the 80s and 90s. Imagine what they'll be in the next 50 years. Just the list that looklakelaborcamp listed isn't even the beginning, if you really think about it. How many chargers? How many battery operated tools and cleaning implements do we have these days? OT: I had my windows and sliders on the front of the house taken out. I think I'm going to brick the front (after much research here on GW/Houzz) but first things first. I'm replacing my horrendous windows and sliders with Anderson casement windows and two sets of beautiful, 2" thick antique doors where the sliders were. Those sliders just plain sucked, as did the windows. Talk about leaky... My house looks like it's foreclosed upon, all boarded up. Doesn't help that my lawn was up to my waist. Who needs to buy grass seed? Just grow your own. I'm sure, though, that the scummy neighbors figure it's now mowed because it's going up for sale. I'm kind of afraid to leave! CL: 7 new windows $500. 4, exterior, antique doors $200. Labor: to take out? Free. To put back in? $100 a day and they will be PERFECT. If it takes longer than a day, given my weird house, it's $100 until that window is done! I can afford this.

Hello Oakley, " But what do I do about the flowers? " Well, if that last picture truly describes the problem, and that species of katydid is the answer to the question in the title to this message thread, then you catch and kill those katydids. In previous messages you have caught in the act a small beetle that was much too small to have done any significant damage, and a young preying mantis, which is carnivorous and your friend in the garden. That katydid can obviously hop like a grasshopper, so he is a formidable enemy. A quick grab at him will probably damage the cosmos bloom, or break its stem, or both. I would probably just scare him off of the bloom and then catch him. If I were wanting to add him to an insect collection, a butterfly net could be an effective tool for catching him. As kids on the farm, we used to shoot large grasshoppers and cicadas with a BB gun. We used a Red Ryder rifle, but nowadays a target BB pistol might be more handy. But there are obvious disadvantages to that approach for your katydids, including the traditional "you will shoot your eye out". At a time when we were renting a townhouse that had only a few square feet of available gardening space, I was growing tomatoes in large containers on the front porch, and we had a serious problem with whiteflies. I used our canister vacuum cleaner to suck the whiteflies up, and that worked quite well. There was some minor accidental leaf damage, but some insects can be easily controlled with a vacuum cleaner hose. Katydids, not so much. At least you would have to remove the crevice tool to make room for them in the hose. I don't have a good solution for you with the Katydids on your Cosmos. Maybe just a pair of gloves to embolden your catching technique. Maybe a butterfly net. There are various insect catching gadgets on Amazon, but none that seem particularly suitable for katydids. A high powered laser gun could do the trick, but then there is that inevitable "you will shoot your eye out". ZM

In lieu of squishing, you can fling these critters into the grass so it can be a bird meal. It does look like an armyworm, the offspring of a ubiquitous, nondescript moth. Probably not a guest you would prefer to have in your garden, but it's normal for occasional critters to do occasional things to plants, and a little munching is normal and won't hurt anything in the overall picture. And also normal for you to remove them if there are enough to damage your enjoyment of your plants. Since it will fly away as an adult to lay eggs who-knows-where, it's not something that requires some kind of action to deter for next year. But on the general subject of caterpillars and blooming plants... Hopefully you are among most people who appreciate pretty butterflies... which come from caterpillars. Some garden plants are host plants (food plants) for the caterpillars of various butterflies. I usually try to ID a caterpillar before doing anything to it because it would be cruel and unusual to attract beautiful butterflies to my garden, where they laid eggs, and then destroy their offspring, their caterpillars.