Diary of My Country Life-February 14th, 2026

The original source of this blog: https://www.lotusandmichael.com/blogs/diary-of-my-country-life

02/14/2026 Saturday 23-47F Cloudy

A fox must have snuck into my garage and chewed on my sun-dried pork belly yesterday afternoon, since this morning when I opened my garage, I noticed that my pork belly was one piece short and the remaining one’s bottom was chewed.

My husband said that perhaps the cats did it—there were several cats which visited or passed by our back yard often: A white one, who grew out a lot of fur this winter so looked like a big fuzzy snowball; a black one and an orange-white one, the white cat’s new companions. But the problems were: My pork belly had been hung indoors and outdoors for several weeks, while the cats hanging around all the time never really bothered the meat; plus the fact that there were three strings of dried sardine hanging right next my pork belly, which should be more favorable to cats but they weren’t touched. And, this critter didn’t only take my garage as a canteen, but also used it as his restroom because at the garage door I found his poop, which didn’t seem like a cat’s.

I sighed, cleaned up the shit, and inspected my pork. One piece was taken off from the hook and dragged a few feet away, dirty and nasty so had to be thrown away; the other piece, also my last piece, was still on the hook only the end got a minor bite—the meat had been sun-dried for quite a while so it was too hard for any animals to eat. Obviously the fox tried them, lost interest, and gave up. Had the snow not piled on the ground for so many weeks therefore the source of food became very scarce, the fox wouldn’t have risked entering my garage during the daytime and taken a bite on something as hard as a hardwood log. As long as I cut off the chewed part, boiled the rest, it should be still edible. My last piece of sun-dried pork belly of this year, it was too precious to be dumped. 

The funny thing was: Later on, when we drove back home from the market, we saw a fox in a neighbor’s front yard—his orange-red fur gave him away easily against the white snow. Strangely, the fox saw our car as well from a distance. Instead of running away as usual, he stopped, watching us drive by and even turned his head to us for a while. Did he recognize our bug-eyed car since where it was parked he just did a theft? 😂 But how could I really blame a starving fox?

Other than this theft and the suspect, lately I had another discovery—soap nuts. Since last July, I started to DIY shampoo at home. First, I purchased an aloe vera, used its meaty leaves, soap base, and rosemary sprigs to make my shampoo; I also added jasmine flowers in it for the fragrance. But after having used it for more than half a year, I figured that perhaps I could do something better. Then I checked online, by chance soap nuts came across to me—they were berries from soap nut trees containing natural saponin which could be used for household cleaning and personal uses such as laundry detergent, soap, and shampoo.

There was another Chinese herb named “Chinese honey locust”, about which I heard that in the old days people used it to wash clothes and hair. These two, the soap nut and honey locust plants were very similar. As an environmentalist, to have a chemical-free home is always my pursuit. So, without hesitation, I purchased a bag of soap nuts. I also bought some dried fleece-flower roots which is a famous medicinal plant in China due to its benefits for hair health. 

Soap nuts, fleece-flower roots, ginger, lemon and water—they were the ingredients of my new herbal shampoo, pure and natural and with a great deal of advantages. And these herbs could only be cooked in clay pots (not steel ones since the herbs would react with metal). So, a traditional casserole medicine pot joined my cookware collection—it had a very rustic look and was super cute. I boiled my herbs for nearly three hours. The shampoo liquid was made, and I tried it yesterday, felt pretty good.

But it was still too early to tell whether the new shampoo was better than the old one or not. Personally, I liked it more because I could 100% take ownership of the whole procedure and source my own ingredients; if it worked well, I could modify the formula by adding different herbs for different functions; I could even add flowers like lavender for the scent.

My husband thought that I was a little rigid. The old one was good enough, and natural enough compared to 99% of products we could find in the market. However, its benefits were limited; and when I read the ingredients of the soap base, it’s not all natural. All in or nothing, there’s no in-betweens, and no excuses since the all-in ones could be achieved.

I have a plan—once my new shampoo passes the test, I will create more and perhaps even can sell some extra on my website (though the quantity will be very limited). In this case, I shall learn more about Chinese medicinal herbs since each one carries different purposes. I remember that three years ago I got a mysterious itch all over my body, no medicine could stop or improve it except for a hormone injection (my itch was too bad so the doctor had to give me one). Then my husband took me to a Chinese acupuncture doctor, who prescribed some cooked medicinal herbs for me to take every day. One week later, the symptoms were severely reduced; three weeks later, the itch had completely gone and has never come back. I was amazed. That was my first time to deal with those little herbs and the liquid cooked from them, which  were awfully bitter; but they were gifts from Mother Nature. We all should know more about them and take full advantage of them. I believe that every plant, every life being has a mission in this world, just like soap nuts: How can they be naturally born to be soap?

By the way, I also used several soap nuts for laundry, the result was better than I had expected—the laundry was clean and fresh under the sun and didn’t smell soap nutty at all—soap nuts did have an acid smell which some people might not like. But these little berries were so responsible; for what they could do to us, I forgave all their flaws.