'Bug Off!'

Sophia tries her hand at making insect repellent.

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Syka is a new settlement of primarily humans on the east coast of Falyndar opposite of Riverfall on The Suvan Sea. [Syka Codex]

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'Bug Off!'

Postby Sophia Sunshore on August 25th, 2019, 3:02 pm

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43rd Summer, 519 a.v.


The first thing that Sophia wanted to have ready for the official opening of her business was some form of insect repellent. The summer especially had bought an abundance of biting insects to Syka, and the residents seemed to be going through the stock in the Mercantile like there was no tomorrow. If she could figure out a way to easily make a simple version here in Syka, then they would no longer need to import it from elsewhere and risk running out of the stuff. She knew that the bugs would not let up with the change of the seasons.

She had been speaking to both Uta and Jansen about how to go about it, as they seemed to have the superior knowledge on the plants and their uses. While they all suspected there were many plants that would work, they both agreed that the citronella plant seemed to be of the best and most effective - Uta had noticed that bugs avoided landing on or near it. Sophia would have to experiment with other plants and the products she could make from them to see which bugs liked and avoided what. For now though, she would focus on making things from just the citronella plant, to keep it simple.

She had a citronella plant growing among the others on the platform next to her philtering lab. She hadn’t particularly noticed any bugs avoiding it, but it was surrounded by some of the more aromatic plants like lavender. While she knew that you could just crush the leaves and rub them on the skin with the sap, it would use up the plant very quickly. She decided to extract the oil from the plant to use in its pure form, or to mix into another type of product. It would be more potent than just crushing the plant, and in theory, much more effective at warding off the biting insects.

She gathered a generous handful of the citronella plant stems. Sophia was not really sure how much oil she would get from it - that was knowledge that she would obtain over time. If the coconut oil she made with Uta was anything to go by, she wouldn’t have much, but hopefully enough to start experimenting properly with. She took the stems into the lab and set them on the desk before moving over to the fireplace.

There was a small pile of very dry sticks next to the fireplace, and she arranged some of these with some coconut fibre beneath the empty pot that hung inside the fireplace. Next, Sophia took up her flint and steel and struck it a few times until a spark was generated that flicked onto the fibre to catch it alight. She tended the tiny flame for a few moments until it grew into a small fire, flickering happily in the grate. She stood, taking the pot with her and made her way back to the desk. It was a small pot, far too small for the cooking of food, but big enough for what she needed today. Sophia had a few different sizes of pots lined up next to the fire, though most of them were so far unused.

Into the small pot she poured a glug of olive oil. Unlike when she made the coconut oil, to extract the pure citronella it needed to be simmered in something else, and she had been told that olive oil was the best thing to use. Sophia had then asked how one would make olive oil, but she would have needed tools she didn’t have, like a grindstone. Thankfully olive oil was easy enough to import until perhaps one day she could make it herself.

There was nothing more to do in preparation, aside from drop the citronella stems and leaves into the olive oil. Sophia then set the pot over the fire she had made, placing the lid on upside down so that anything that condensed on it would drip back down into the mixture. All Sophia had to do now was wait. The oil would take at least four bells for the first simmer, she reckoned, she just had to check it every now and again.
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Sophia Sunshore
Plant Lady
 
Posts: 213
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Joined roleplay: July 5th, 2018, 5:26 pm
Location: Syka
Race: Human, Mixed
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'Bug Off!'

Postby Sophia Sunshore on August 25th, 2019, 3:29 pm

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While the oil heated up, Sophia headed back outside to tend to her little vertical garden. The shelves she had built were now stuffed with plants - currently mostly herbs - and they were thriving in the Sykan summer. Herbs as it turned out, loved the sunshine as much as the Svefra did. The first thing on her plant list was to remove anything that was dead or dying to make way for fresh growth. She took up her small herbalist snips and carefully combed through each plant in turn. Any cuts she made, she made right down to a ‘node’, the place where new growth would stem from. She cut right down to nodes, even if there was a little piece above that was still nice and green, as she knew the plant would just grow better that way.

A small collection of old plant material was slowly forming at her feet, and when she was finally done going over each plant, she gathered this all up and stuck it in a bucket underneath her house. She hadn’t decided what the material would be used for, but Uta often had ways of turning things into fertiliser or compost, and the Svefra had been meaning to head over and ask the botanist what she could do to her cuttings.

Next, Sophia went through and watered all of her plants. Most of the time she watered them daily in the morning, as the summer heat tended to dry out the pots fairly quickly. A couple she left longer between waterings, such as the aloe plant, as they appeared to like being on the drier side. She then took up her snips again and selected a couple of plants to take fresh cuttings from. Sophia took a handful of lavender stems, some chamomile and a little bit of mint. These she would dry and use to make teas, as dried teas stored better than fresh tea.

She took the fresh cuttings into the lab and set them on the desk before moving to check on the oil and citronella mixture. It was simmering away nicely, and she gave it a gentle stir before replacing the lid. A little over two bells had passed since she had first set the mixture over the flames and she wanted to leave it at least two more.

Sophia went back to her desk and separated the herbs back into their bunches. She cut lengths of string and tied each together into small bundles. Then she climbed up onto her desk, and balancing herself as best she could, tied each of the bunches upside down onto the cord she had attached to the ceiling, across the length of the room. These would take a while to dry out, but there were other bunches up there already at various stages of dryness.

She still had time to spare while waiting for the first simmer of oil to complete, so Sophia headed back over to her home and grabbed an orange to eat, along with her journal. She took notes on exactly what she had done so far with the citronella, roughly estimating the amounts of olive oil and plant material she had used. She also noted down which plants she had taken new cuttings from. Sophia was trying to get into the habit of writing down absolutely everything to do with her plants and stock so that she should never be caught without something she needed.
User avatar
Sophia Sunshore
Plant Lady
 
Posts: 213
Words: 193757
Joined roleplay: July 5th, 2018, 5:26 pm
Location: Syka
Race: Human, Mixed
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Plotnotes
Medals: 1
Featured Character (1)


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