Essential Herbal Remedy for the Holistic Lifestyle -Echinacea

Veterinarians have long known about the benefits of Echinacea as an herbal remedy. A formerly abundant flower growing wild in massive sprays Echinacea has all but disappeared from its native habitat. Veterinarians have long used Echinacea as an herbal remedy for livestock. The whole plant flower, leaf, root, and stem went in with the usual feed ingredients. For humans, this herbal remedy is quite effective, too. Of course, it won’t be in a feedbag, but this herbal remedy really works.

Over harvesting has changed the volunteer status of these wildflowers, but not to worry. Now that people are aware of Echinacea’s worth as an herbal remedy, it is being cultivated all around the world. In certain soils it is actually invasive.

Echinacea is known for its power to fight off virus, stomach problems, and infections. In general, Echinacea can be used as an herbal remedy for getting rid of flu, colds, and skin problems, rheumatic fever. The fact that it can handle a virus is one thing it’s got over antibiotics.

At first, this unusual flower was harvested for its roots. Now the whole plant including leaves and flowers goes into the healing mix for making the herbal remedy. After harvesting, it is hung upside down to air dry. Then it is pulverized and made into capsules, or conjoined with other beneficial herbs.

Growing to about two feet tall, the two potent varieties of Echinacea are the purple, and the white. Also known as coneflower, it grows thin petals similar to a daisy drooping out of a cone shaped center.

Echinacea, an essential herbal remedy – How to grow and process

Nurseries sell Echinacea flower starts, as it has become popular for its unusual ascetic appeal in a flower garden. Cultivating it for medicinal herbal remedies would be one way to make sure it’s the real McCoy, since substitutes are being sold under the name of Echinacea.

The best time to harvest is right before the bloom completely opens. Starting out with the stems tied together in a bundle, hang the bundle upside down in a dry place. Let it get started with open-air drying, and then cover it with a paper bag to finish the process.

After it’s completely dry, pick the leaves off and save the flower heads. Run it through an herb grinder, an electric coffee mill, or a food processor with good sharp blades.

Herbal remedy plants that you grow for yourself enable you to be proactive about your own health. For people who don’t have health insurance, these essential herbal remedies will contribute to well being through self-sufficient means.

Almost Everything You Wanted to Know about Hosta Lilies

Hosta Lily: Propagation, Care and Where to Find Best Varieties
Good points about adding hostas to the shade garden. How new varieties add interest with foliage. Propogation is really quite easy. Recommendation of where to buy.
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Gardening Transplanting Tips

Before you know it, the greenhouses will be opening up, and spring will be in full motion.

Some tips for transplanting from nursery stock are as follows:

1.) Once the flats of new plant babies arrive at your home, they need to go into the garden right away. The soil they have been living in is probably depleted, and leaving them around even for two or three days can be traumatic.

2.) I always check the moonsign to ensure optimum growth.

1. first quarter of the moon is best for above ground plants

2. second quarter continues to be good planting.

3. full moon is not a good time for activities in the garden.

4. last quarter accommodates root crops like carrots or beets
   
   

3.) Soak the flats in water for a while first. This gets the roots loose and ranging around nicely. I don't go with the recommendations of scraping or digging into the roots for loosening up the root ball. Salty fingers and scraping on delicate roots seems all wrong.

4.) A mild solution of liquid fertilizer strengthens the nursery starts and bolsters them up for growing in the new garden location. Loosen the soil where the planting will take place. Dig the hole and add lots of the diluted fertilizer before putting the starts into the ground. Replace the dirt, gently pat down, and soak the area again once in the ground. Water them every day for a couple of weeks.

5.) While in this process, always say god bless you when moving the plant babies. I shared this transplanting ritual with my Catholic girlfriend who changed it into a chant - . . . .godblessyou godblessyou godblessyou.

When it's harvest time, your plant babies will be grown up and ready to return your blessing with the bounty of flowers and/or vegetable produce from your very own garden.

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Review of "The Dumbest Generation" a Book by Mark Baurlien
More than an elder shaking a finger at misguided youth, the effects of contemporary kid's toys prove to be more far reaching. Economic as well as societal concerns blame illiteracy due use of electronic gadgets.
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Personal Impressions of Martin Luther King's Dream
First hand experience of a little girl from the north who was transplanted to the deep south. Segregation, mistreatment of blacks, and hateful language leaves a deep impression.
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Dyslexia - Parents Who Took the Challenge
First hand insights of this author's dyslexic experiences and research finding how dyslexia shows up in brain scans. How parental input is very significant.
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Life and People

Garden Divas
A folklore of unseen elements in the garden. Every growing thing has a spirit to address. . .likes and dislikes just like people.
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Here's a potato recipe I stumbled upon, and it turned out to be really simple. Every recipe I do is prepared for the getting the most nutrition. Sometimes the easiest way is also the most nutritious.

I don't peel potatoes, just clean them really well and remove eyes.

I try to avoid using cornstarch. Corn products give the least amount of nutrition per calories consumed. So, in this recipe I used oatmeal for the thickener.


QUICK AND EASY SCALLOPED POTATOES

Oil the casserole pan you've chosen for the number of servings. Use one potato per person.

Slice your nice clean potatoes into the bottom of the casserole making only one layer.

Dot with little squares of Cheddar or mozzarella cheese. Then sprinkle with a thin layer of of oatmeal (avoid the instant kind if possible.) I also sprinkle flax seed with the oatmeal. Add salt lightly between each layer, too.

Alternate layers of these ingredients till you reach the top of the pan. For an interesting effect, cut the last layer of potatoes into small cubes. You can add some thin wedges of onion with these. The onions turn dark brown on the tips.

Now add milk till it fills the casserole to about a half an inch from the top.

Bake at 300 degrees or until bubbling. . .about thirty minutes.

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Flawed Economic System - Could Neurosis be the Cause?

A more sophisticated economic theory leaped out at me one day when I decided to leaf through the alumni publication sent out by my old alma mater. Usually nothing interests me about those days of old because nothing is same there anymore.

Page turn. In this beautifully done publication, a photo of an interesting looking man was situated next to a caption. It pressed for an answer : “What kind of shopper are you ?” I hoped it wasn’t anything trite like a ten question quiz. It wasn’t.

The man in the photo, Paul J. Albanese, studied economics but changed over to psychology when he couldn’t agree with the teachings of economic theories regarding human behavior.

He believed the predictions and forecasts about people in modern day society are different now. Marketing forecasts should be based on a few more categories of types of people and what kind of behaviors come from each.

According to this new perspective on economics, four different personality categories branch out in varying degrees of intensity. Believed to provide market researchers with more accuracy and detail – Albanese describes normal, neurotic, primitive, psychotic in that order. More gray area to ponder is that the not-normal folks have good days when they may pass as normal.

The Normal type consumers earn their namesake category because of being consistent and predictable. Neurotic shoppers are ambivalent, indecisive individuals. Primitives are a pain in the neck to everyone around them. Compulsives will max out a credit card, and spend every dollar they have when binging on excess. Psychotic shopping is the low end extreme where people have been arrested for passing bad checks.

Albanese: “Typically when marketers do research, there’s an implicit assumption that everyone they’re using as research are [functioning] at the normal level. And unless they are at the normal level, their behavior might not be consistent, causing the research to be flawed.”

Does he mean to imply that greed isn’t part of the equation? What about avarice?

The flawed research may be what Greenspan referred to in his public apology speech in late October 2008. He seemed to be quivering as he spoke of the flaw in his thinking. He stood up to take responsibility for his part in the financial crisis. apologize for the errors of his wrong thinking.

If we have a new economic reality to deal with – what is it? And if we are suddenly supposed to do business by this new reality, what was the old one? How did we succeed with the old reality if indeed it was so very wrong? I think it comes down to morals.

A generation of noble folks is passing on. Now we have people doing business who are of a new belief system, can be from any part of the world, of any religion or lack thereof.

More on the psychology of economics: Ignoring these nuances could influence the premises that the marketers use for judging a trend as well as the motivations behind the trend. After twenty five years of research, the economic psychologist states that a marketer must be able to distinguish someone who has bipolar disorder from someone who simply operates at the primitive level.

We’ve had fun with statistics and calculating the variables with the amazing speeds our computers have computed, but now it’s time to soften the edges of the cookie cutter. The economic system that once operated on trust, can do so no more – that’s where the tear in the fabric became a flaw.

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