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!