Faith, Folklore, and Friends

If you love gardening, you have probably seen P. Allen Smith's Garden Home on Create and other TV  stations. Last week, Hub and I toured his home and garden at Moss Mountain Farm.  A.maz.ing!!!!! There was seventy of us, and they fed us lunch here. It turned out to be a hot, most excellent day!  In fact, Hub and I are planning to return in the spring.  Want to go?

When you set out to work on a garden,  something surprising happens. The garden  goes to work on you, too. In the process of  bringing a patch of earth to life, your life is  transformed.  ~Amy Stewart  

Anything posted here is for education and entertainment. I am not a doctor, just someone who loves folklore and learning about how people coped before modern medicine. You are entirely on your own if you want to experiment. Those of you who have studied folk medicine will have heard about the Doctrine of Signatures. It is a philosophy that says the shape and colors of some plants look like the body parts that their medicinal properties could treat or cure. For example, liverwort has liver-shaped leaves and is used for liver ailments. Bloodroot, a beautiful green plant with white blossoms, has red roots that look like blood. Native Americans used the roots for blood related maladies, but internal use is discouraged now; it appears to be highly toxic. Lungwort is so named because its spotted, oval leaves resemble diseased or ulcerated lungs. The list goes on and on. One of the oldest known herbalists, Galen of Pergamun, used this philosophy during the 2nd and 3rd century. ...

There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry. Benjamin Franklin I love gardening. Even as a child, I loved digging in the dirt, seeing seeds sprout, and watching plants grow to maturity and bear fruit. It is the best thing I have found to relieve stress. We are an impatient lot here in the winter. Sometimes, warm autumn days will last until Thanksgiving, and daffodils are blooming by early March. Compared to others, out winter is relatively short. It is way too long for me. Early in January, after the holidays are over and things are looking dark and bleak, there is...