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| Potted Aloe vera |
At last week's local Farmers' Market, a lady asked her husband to buy her “that burn plant.” She was referring to one of my potted Aloe barbadensis (also called Aloe vera) plants. The plant does offer excellent first aid for burns — and also sunburn. I started keeping a pot of it on my kitchen windowsill years ago for just that purpose. You may have noticed that aloe vera is an ingredient in many modern skin treatments. The plant was used medicinally by the Egyptians and Greeks at least 2,400 years ago, but has fairly recently been “rediscovered”. It was used both externally and internally. J.D. recently pointed out a bottle in the grocery food supplements that is a fruit juice and aloe vera mixture. To use the plant on burns, cut off a piece of one of the fleshy leaves and squeeze the internal gel over the burn. The gel has both anesthetic and antiseptic properties. The pain decreases very quickly. Unless the burn is severe (and should be treated by a doctor), it should leave neither scar nor skin discoloration.
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| Chives in bloom in Annake's garden |
This got me to thinking about all of our plants that serve more than one purpose. For example, we have Allium (onion family) plants throughout our gardens. Not only are many of them good to eat, but some garden pests — including deer — tend to avoid them. Also, others have attractive flowers and are grown primarily for their blooms. Giant purple alliums and cheery yellow sunny twinkles come to mind. I would grow common chives (Allium schoenoprasum) for their flowers, even if they were not so useful in the kitchen. They have lovely round heads of lavender flowers in late spring. Our garlic chives (Allium tuberosum) produce star-shaped white flowers later in the summer. Put leaves, stems, and even flowers of chives into a bottle of vinegar — I prefer white wine vinegar — seal, and leave for a couple of weeks or until the scent and taste of the vinegar suits you. Onions have been used medicinally, too. I remember my grandmother making creamed onions for me when I was little and had a bad cold.
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| Blooms of purple alliums and yellow Sunny Twinkles |
On the same market day, we were offering freshly harvested peppermint (Mentha piperita), spearmint (Mentha spicata), and lemon balm (Melissa officinalis). Despite the difference in scientific names, all three are mints — as are scarlet-flowered salvia, bee balm, catnip, and many other plants. I learned the use of peppermint tea to cure stomach upsets from Frau Hauk, our landlady in Germany. I keep both frozen and dried leaves on hand to make it. The mints are full of chemicals like thymol and menthol, both of which are useful for arthritis relief, especially for those of us who are allergic to capsaicin. Both peppermint and spearmint are delightful additions to summer iced tea. If you have an old-fashioned ice cube tray, freeze single leaves in water in each compartment. They not only add to the taste of the tea: they are pretty as well. Chop either or both mints finely, mix with sugar and serve on top of grapefruit halves or fresh pineapple.
Of all the many plants that have “lemon” in their names, I like lemon balm the best. Its fragrance alone is reason to grow it. I have never offered it to a woman who didn't like the scent — although there was a man who said it smelled like furniture polish. It tastes just as good as it smells, too. It is a welcome addition to salads, including fruit salads, and a good garnish for vegetable and fish dishes. I especially like it with early green peas.
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| Lemon balm in Annake's garden |
The “balm” in its name shows that it has been used medicinally. My research told me that Roman soldiers used it as a poultice on wounds, claiming it helped them heal without infection. While gathering fresh herbs one morning, I suffered a nasty cut to the palm of my hand. I cleaned the cut, washed some lemon balm, and applied it to the cut, wrapping a clean cloth around the hand. The pain decreased right away and soon ceased altogether. When I checked it an hour or so later, I could actually see the sides of the cut drawing together. By afternoon, there was only a bright pink line across my palm. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it! The cut healed completely and left no scar. We tend to disregard the wisdom of the ancients, but they were wise in many ways — or else we wouldn't be here!
Another of my favorite mints is horehound. It is a pretty plant with small, oval, gray-green leaves edged neatly with white. The tiny white flowers form fluffy little wreaths around the joints of the stem, peeking shyly out from under the leaves. The plant is both fragrant and tasty. I remember my father buying me horehound candy when I had a sore throat. Fortunately, there is a shop in a town we visit frequently that still sells old-fashioned candies like anise, horehound, and sassafras.
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| Horehound, plant and flower specimen |
How do you know a mint when you meet one? They have square stems, rather than the round or oval stems that most green plants have. Sage, marjoram, oregano, thyme and basil are mints. The lavender in bath salts and oils (and my anti-static dryer sheets) comes from mints, as does the patchouli in many popular perfumes. The multicolored Coleus species that we cultivate as houseplants are tropical mints. In Panama, we saw trees of the Hyptis species which have square trunks and can sometimes reach a height of 40 feet. Now that's a MINT!
Just for fun, try a new herb this week. I think you'll like it!
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Let me tell you a couple of personal stories to illustrate my "take" on life. My paternal grandmother was a Frisian immigrant fleeing disease and poverty. She crossed the Atlantic in steerage and went more than halfway across the U.S. to marry a man with whom she had corresponded, but whom she had never met. She was a midwife and an herbalist. I lived with her for a while when I was little, in a small town on the Missouri/Arkansas border. She delivered more than 150 babies in her lifetime. When she turned 75, some forty or more of the people she had delivered lined up in rows by her front fence to sing "Happy Birthday". I was enchanted. "Grandma, they're so pretty! They are all different colors!" She told me that was the way it should be because that was how the Good Lord made us and He loves us all. Later she taught me not to judge people by their appearance or what they did for a living, but by how they treated other people — a lesson I never forgot.
Not too long ago, a lady with skin a little darker than mine said I couldn't understand something in her life "because you're white." I told her I have never considered myself "white". I have Native American blood and Gypsy blood, and somewhere down the line there are slanted eyes. My other grandmother had them. I don't, but one of my children does. None of those ancestors were ever accused of being "white". I always checked "Other" on paperwork, or wrote "Human" on the line for race. The way I feel is that I'm Multicolored and I'm proud of it!
Right now I am researching and writing a post about The Psychology of Color. That is something that has always fascinated me. It will be the next one in the color series. It is a big topic with many facets that are pertinent right now, so it may take some time to finish it.
We have had friends call us from towns in the valley to alert us to smoke or flames erupting on the heights above us. Autumn before last we came down from a day enjoying and photographing the aspens to emerge on the highway where more than half a dozen cars were parked every-which-way on the pavement while people took pictures of a blaze starting up the side of the mesa. Not a single person had called the nearest fire department!!! We called for help and pretty much bullied the crowd into moving their vehicles out of the way of the engines we could already hear racing up from the nearest town. We got our own vehicle onto a side road. Fortunately only one slope of a small ravine burned. We plan to talk about fire prevention and safety as well as the broader aspects of the importance of preserving our global forests and the impact they have on the health of the planet.
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