Bloom where you are planted (or a little philosophy served up with your herbs):
I was sitting on a comfy chair watching my husband work the earth in our garden thinking on this subject, as I do from time to time. There are actually two sides to this blooming question. First is the most obvious, make the best of where you are, in fact, thrive and bloom! The shadow side of this question is a little thornier. Does one just put roots down into the ground and hang on stubbornly while wilting in the dry summer heat? What if blooming just ain't blooming happenin'?
I am a gypsy at heart, married to a homebody and committed to 14 acres in dry, hot North Central Texas. We like to grow things but I forgot to check about the under ground water question when I bought this place! No water! We plant and hope in the spring, in the summer we spend our life savings on water while watching the plants die. Mike says he may as well bang his head on a concrete wall! But, here we are with dogs and geese and ducks and chickens and cats all depending on us and a husband who is a homebody. So, it's the blooming question raising it's blooming head as I sit here with spring fever!
Hummm, what is that I smell? It smells like honey, so sweet. Ahhh, yes I am sitting not so near a algerita. Do you know the algerita plant? I bet you do....
It's an evergreen shrub that grows out and about our lands here in this part of Texas. It is probably about 6-9 feet and right now is covered with sweet smelling yellow flowers-do you see it? But, don't sniff too closely or you will get your nose poked, think holly! Beware of bees gathering the sweet pollen!
In the fall the flowers will be replaced by fruit-red berries. The berries can be gathered to make jelly, but don't stick your hand in there to pick them! OUCH. My mom says as children they would be sent out to gather the berries. Here's how it's done-you place a clean sheet under the shrub and then beat it (gently please) until the berries fall onto the sheet. Gather the sheet and berries without pain!
It you chop up a bit of the root and cut it open you will find that inside the bark the plant is yellow. What does this suggest? Yep, contains berberine. It can be used like goldenseal or Oregon Graperoot. I think it's important to use the medicines in your own yard rather than those from somewhere else....thus Algerita when you need a berberine containing medicine, please.
What would that be for? A bitter tonic. Bitters used to be used a lot more than they are now and they are still very important in other countries-we, however, like our sweet!
A bitter might have been used as a spring tonic by your grandmother. To stimulate the gastric system, act as a laxative and get the liver going after a winter of heavy foods and less activity. I think of this as kind of a seasonal tonic-a spring cleaning tonic. It is not a tonic you would want to use for more than a week, maybe two.
Sitting there smelling the sweet algerita I imagined I might get a shovel and dig a little root, pound it up real good and maybe tincture it. That way I could have a couple of years worth of spring tonic from one small plant-after checking, of course, to make sure there was plenty to harvest.
I'm was brought brought back from my musings as 3 crows flew over where Mike was working. I watched as my sweetheart dug the ground and prepared it for his veggies. I noticed how much the soil has been improved over the years he has worked with it, how dead red clay had been replaced by loose, brown living soil.
Oh, hell yeah....just keep working and improving the soil of life and before you know it you are blooming right where you are with people and things you love!
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Same blog site, new focus!
I have had some requests to start a blog on all things herbal. How to proceed....first, a name. Hmmm, the only name I liked, dancingwithherbs, was already in use! Oh, yeah, by someone in Trent, Texas.
Ok, we'll just renovate the old blog...give it a face lift and change the focus.
And here we go!
The new focus of the old blog site will be herbs, plants and the peoples' medicine!
If you're new to reading anything I post you will immediately notice I am a bit verbose. If you ask me what time it is, I will tell you how to make a clock. Just wanted to offer that warning up front, if that bothers you I suggest you don't add my blog to your favorites list!
However, if you would like to learn more about herbs and plants....about foraging and wildcrafting for food and medicine....about how to identify and incorporate your own herbal allies...about feeling empowered to care for yourself in most injuries and illnesses.........STAY TUNED?
Thursday, September 13, 2007
THE AMERICAN FARMER..................
I drove to work the back way today. I guess I better explain that term for you city folks. Around here the back way means off the main roads, through the country, on the country roads.
It was just beautiful. In this part of Texas a person can see for miles and miles and miles, until the horizon meets the earth. What I saw was field after field of cotton, maize and an occasional pasture with cattle grazing or tank with steam raising off the surface. It is just beautiful and it all represents the hard work and sweat of the American farmer.
My destination each morning is Roby, Texas. Home of the "Roby Millionaires" (lottery winners), the American farmer, and the Roby Rural Health Clinic. I know I am getting close when I start to pass tractors and combines instead of cars.
I've been back in Texas, from Alaska for almost 3 months. I started working at the Roby Clinic the first of July and I really love my job. I feel honored to provide health care for these proud, hard working families. When I took the assignment in Alaska I thought I would be contributing by providing care to the Native population but what I found was a huge well oiled, well financed machine. The money in the Native Alaska Coporations is significant and they have wisely invested in health care. I loved caring for the elders and found them to be very much like my farmers-a proud but quiet and courteous people. However, my experience with the middle age and younger Natives was not the same. Many, not all but enough to accurately generalize, had a chip on their shoulder and felt they were "owed my education and health care by you white people who took my land." Now this is a strange statement from a person whose land has never been occupied and who are still living in their ancestorial villages and collecting up to $56,000 a year (without working) from their Native Corportion. I have worked in health care since I was 16 and have never been cussed or verbally abused until I worked at the Alaska Native Medical Center PCC. I was treated with a great deal of disrespect by even my teenaged patients. This was not just my experience, the other travelers and full time providers complained constantly about the abusive way in which we were treated and the refusal of the organization to intervene or allow us to address the issue.
But, enough of that. I am mentioning this just to point out the vast difference in my experience here in Roby. First of all, I am filling a need here that far surpasses the need in Alaska, at least in Anchorage. There is a shortage of providers and a a shortage of money out here in the rural areas. At Roby we have three grants that allows us to provide care free or at reduced cost to the patient. For the most part our patients are very grateful for the opportunity to recieve health care that they would not be able to afford without these services. Now this isn't to say we don't have our bad apples, we do...everyone does...but it's the rare bad apple rather than an apple cart going to rot.
Let me tell you about my patients-this is a composite and does not discribe specifically any one person so as to protect privacy:
There is the 20 year old that comes in for his wellness exam wearing combat boots and covered with tats answering "yes, mam" and "no, mam" , a big smile that never leaves his face and wishing everyone a good day on the way out. He may look like a "bad ass" but he leaves me with a smile on my face and feeling a little more chipper than when he arrived.
There is the middle age farmer, weathered and at risk for skin cancer, who comes in at the urging of family because the stress has finally worn him down. The drought has almost driven him out of business, now we have lots of rain and a bumper crop- a bumper crop which may mean lower prices because of the abundance of cotton. He leaves making me feel a little angry at a system that doesn't pay a man for his hard work and sweat and is slowly making the family farm a thing of the past because they can't compete with big business farming.
Then comes the teenage girl wearing her FFA jacket who is having trouble with her allergies since she's back in ag class and mucking out the pig barn. Again it's "yes mam" and "no mam"....I can't imagine her calling me a
f-ing bitch like the 17 year old in Anchorage that I dreaded seeing every time her name was on my schedule. She leaves making me feel a lot better about leaving our world in the hands of today's young people.
There's the illegal farm worker who is living on $10 a week so he can send the rest of his money back to Mexico where he is supporting an extended family of wife, children and parents. He is proudly working at a job many people in the US would consider "menial" and making a salary we would consider well below the poverty level. However, he is proud to have a job and is almost rich in his home country. And, whatever your politics, he is providing labor to the family farmer who could not afford more costly labor. He comes to the clinic when everything he knows to do has failed-for the most part, you know he really needs health care if he walks in the door.
I consider myself honored to be providing care for these folks-yet, they treat me like I am something special. Little do they know-they are the ones that make this country what it is!
I guess I had to travel thousands of miles to realize where I belong! To see the beauty in the West Texas landscape and in Her people...yep, I'm glad to be home!
I drove to work the back way today. I guess I better explain that term for you city folks. Around here the back way means off the main roads, through the country, on the country roads.
It was just beautiful. In this part of Texas a person can see for miles and miles and miles, until the horizon meets the earth. What I saw was field after field of cotton, maize and an occasional pasture with cattle grazing or tank with steam raising off the surface. It is just beautiful and it all represents the hard work and sweat of the American farmer.
My destination each morning is Roby, Texas. Home of the "Roby Millionaires" (lottery winners), the American farmer, and the Roby Rural Health Clinic. I know I am getting close when I start to pass tractors and combines instead of cars.
I've been back in Texas, from Alaska for almost 3 months. I started working at the Roby Clinic the first of July and I really love my job. I feel honored to provide health care for these proud, hard working families. When I took the assignment in Alaska I thought I would be contributing by providing care to the Native population but what I found was a huge well oiled, well financed machine. The money in the Native Alaska Coporations is significant and they have wisely invested in health care. I loved caring for the elders and found them to be very much like my farmers-a proud but quiet and courteous people. However, my experience with the middle age and younger Natives was not the same. Many, not all but enough to accurately generalize, had a chip on their shoulder and felt they were "owed my education and health care by you white people who took my land." Now this is a strange statement from a person whose land has never been occupied and who are still living in their ancestorial villages and collecting up to $56,000 a year (without working) from their Native Corportion. I have worked in health care since I was 16 and have never been cussed or verbally abused until I worked at the Alaska Native Medical Center PCC. I was treated with a great deal of disrespect by even my teenaged patients. This was not just my experience, the other travelers and full time providers complained constantly about the abusive way in which we were treated and the refusal of the organization to intervene or allow us to address the issue.
But, enough of that. I am mentioning this just to point out the vast difference in my experience here in Roby. First of all, I am filling a need here that far surpasses the need in Alaska, at least in Anchorage. There is a shortage of providers and a a shortage of money out here in the rural areas. At Roby we have three grants that allows us to provide care free or at reduced cost to the patient. For the most part our patients are very grateful for the opportunity to recieve health care that they would not be able to afford without these services. Now this isn't to say we don't have our bad apples, we do...everyone does...but it's the rare bad apple rather than an apple cart going to rot.
Let me tell you about my patients-this is a composite and does not discribe specifically any one person so as to protect privacy:
There is the 20 year old that comes in for his wellness exam wearing combat boots and covered with tats answering "yes, mam" and "no, mam" , a big smile that never leaves his face and wishing everyone a good day on the way out. He may look like a "bad ass" but he leaves me with a smile on my face and feeling a little more chipper than when he arrived.
There is the middle age farmer, weathered and at risk for skin cancer, who comes in at the urging of family because the stress has finally worn him down. The drought has almost driven him out of business, now we have lots of rain and a bumper crop- a bumper crop which may mean lower prices because of the abundance of cotton. He leaves making me feel a little angry at a system that doesn't pay a man for his hard work and sweat and is slowly making the family farm a thing of the past because they can't compete with big business farming.
Then comes the teenage girl wearing her FFA jacket who is having trouble with her allergies since she's back in ag class and mucking out the pig barn. Again it's "yes mam" and "no mam"....I can't imagine her calling me a
f-ing bitch like the 17 year old in Anchorage that I dreaded seeing every time her name was on my schedule. She leaves making me feel a lot better about leaving our world in the hands of today's young people.
There's the illegal farm worker who is living on $10 a week so he can send the rest of his money back to Mexico where he is supporting an extended family of wife, children and parents. He is proudly working at a job many people in the US would consider "menial" and making a salary we would consider well below the poverty level. However, he is proud to have a job and is almost rich in his home country. And, whatever your politics, he is providing labor to the family farmer who could not afford more costly labor. He comes to the clinic when everything he knows to do has failed-for the most part, you know he really needs health care if he walks in the door.
I consider myself honored to be providing care for these folks-yet, they treat me like I am something special. Little do they know-they are the ones that make this country what it is!
I guess I had to travel thousands of miles to realize where I belong! To see the beauty in the West Texas landscape and in Her people...yep, I'm glad to be home!
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