MY LAVENDER HARVEST!
As you can see, I have already sold two quarts and saved another quart out for a gift. Must finish stripping the stems in the basket and then begin making rice-filled neck rolls and sleep masks. Mmm! My most fun project ever.
My sister-in-law makes the lavender candles and my daughter-in-law sells them. A local huge Fall Event is coming up soon, where we will try out the market.
Such adventures!
This is my favorite treatment for every problem–just close your eyes! Maybe it will go away!
In the case of eye health, this is definitely true.
But no one tells us.
Study this set of posts. Link to them. Copy-paste them for your fridge. Someone you know needs this information!
Resting
When we do not get enough sleep, eye health breaks down. Do not let this happen to you.
1. The only time your eyes get a rest or a chance to self-heal at all is when you close them. Open your eyes and they are on the job. Just as never resting would weaken a soldier, so never sleeping could weaken the two guards you call your eyes. A good nightly amount is eight hours. If you cannot get that for some reason (sick children, etc.) then pay more attention to daily resting.
2. You may need a timer for this one, at first. Every time you work for 50 minutes, rest your eyes for ten. This includes computer work, yes, but any reading or crafting is work for your eyes, no matter how fun it is. Give them a break.
3. You know how tired eyes feel to you, When your eyes feel overly tired, try this: lie down and cover your eyelids with cool cucumber slices. Chamomile tea bags, boiled, cooled, and squeezed out, work too. Let the soothing compresses take you away!
So now you have it: Four ways to make for better eye health: nutrition, exercise, detoxify, and rest. Let’s all get going on taking care!
Okay, now comes the part we have to say in this lawsuit-happy world: This post is meant to inform and to satisfy curiosity, only, and is not a substitute for medical advice. Consult your doctor for information concerning your conditions. Much effort has been made to assure this information is accurate, however, medical research is always changing the facts, and new findings may supersede currently accepted data. I am NOT a doctor, only quoting several of them.
Know Where to Go
Have a safe place. If you have a basement, that’s the place. Go to the side or corner where the tornado is COMING FROM. (If a tornado lifts the house a bit and then drops it a bit further away, you will not be under it, supposedly. Another somewhat safe place is supposed to be inside any super-reinforced structure, such as a stairway closet, hallway, or shower stall.
Stock the Safe Place
Have a Plan
Okay, there you have some ideas to get you started.
My siblings and I slept in the basement many nights, to the sound of the radio broadcasting the cities and counties in the path of some tornado. Some nights I remember being lifted down those stairs, still half-asleep. Some mornings I awoke to the sounds of my parents readying for another day, upstairs.
The basement was the one my parents built immediately after that infamous tornado in Ruskin Heights.
I just want to tell you about my grandmother, Laura, this time. I am a grandmother, and when I was little, I always wanted to be one. When I need inspiration, I remember my grandmother, Laura. Life is so different, now, though.
I know she was elderly because she had arthritic knuckles, gray hair, and a craggy voice. She wore a dress at all times, and she wore shoes with thick, high heels that tied on, sort of like men’s dress wingbacks, perforations and all. Do they even still sell those?
She sewed all her dresses. And sometimes, as a gift, she sewed my mother a dress, too. And she sewed the first dress I ever wore when I was very tiny. I know she made these dresses, because she made a quilt for each of her grandchildren. She did not go to a store for fabric for these quilts. No, she used fabric scraps from sewing dresses. When she made my quilt, she was careful to use many scraps from my mother’s and from my dresses.
I look at the quilt she made for me and I see the dress my mother wore to church in summer. I see a dress my grandmother wore. I see my very first, ever, dress I wore when I was tiny.
I don’t know how my grandmother found the time. She babysat three children, to make an income, because she was widowed when my mother was six. She used her entire, small backyard as a strawberry patch and put up all those berries or traded them for peaches and crabapples to put up. She made her own soap on the wood stove in the woodshed for all washing needs, for clothing, dishes, and bathing. She heated with wood or coal. She did laundry in the woodshed using a wringer washer and hanging it out in summer or in the woodshed in winter, when it froze.
And she prayed. I mean, she really took time out to pray. She would tell us not to bother her while she prayed, she would go to her room and shut the door, and she would pray.
When we visited her, we played with her one box of toys, leftovers from when our aunts and uncles were little. We loved these odd toys that didn’t do anything except prop up our playtime. She let us watch while she made us rolled-out sugar cookies in shapes like stars, hearts, and flowers. When we asked for colored sugar, she told us it tastes the same. We didn’t believe it.
One wonderful time, I got to sleep with her because I was the oldest and probably would not kick too much. I got to watch her unbraid and comb her hair, which was far beyond waist length. Seeing my grandmother in her gown in the moonlight by the window, combing amazingly long and wavy hair, made her seem to me like an angel. I was in awe.
Then she broke the spell by rebraiding her hair. She never used a rubber band, but simply pulled a strand of hair and wound the end of the braid like a fishing lure. I was filled with questions, then. Why do you braid your hair to sleep? How does it stay in place with no rubber band? I don’t remember her answers, but only my awe and her amusement.
She died about 48 years ago. I still miss her. I still want to be like her when I grow up.
Here is the quilt she made for me. You can see light red and white tiny checked fabric on the bottom, just right of center. That was my baby dress. It had teensy rickrack on it.
Just right of that is a sort of black and pink tattersal with pink x’s. That was my mom’s summer Sunday dress for awhile. It had white lace at the neckline.
Parly out of view on the left is a white with black swirls. My grandmother wore that. There we all are, in one quilt.
This week’s posts answer several questions from a dear woman in a wrenching situation. I answered her immediately and privately, awhile back. Recently postpartum with her first child, she wonders about the effects of her wounded and out-lashing husband. She wonders if it would be better for the baby to live without a dad. Here is the greater part of my answers:
Yes! That “row-to-hoe” can stretch on forever, trying to outlive children, can’t it? I know because I had six of them and they sometimes seemed to have a head start on me.
Just when we imagine all’s well, something surfaces, and usually at the worst time, right? Accustoming myself to motherhood and all its foibles and failures cost me several years of my life. By the time the third child arrived, I thought I’d mastered some techniques of child raising. Boy, was I wrong!
I finally got it, though. Now I know the only, only, only way to give a child a happy life is to have parents who seek God daily, even hourly. I can do my half of that.
Difficult childbirth has knocked at my door, too, leaving me weak and weary. Oh, I know the long days and short nights. I know the constant care-giving while needing care, yourself. I know the disorientation, forgetfulness, depression, and touchiness that come with the elation and wonder at experiencing this tiny new being. How could I have sunk into such sadness when life had dealt such joy as a miracle baby?
Easy.
My health deteriorated when I gave birth. I was not in tip-top shape, in fact, I remembered only vaguely what tip-top felt like. What a zombie I was! Hormones jumped up and down a scale from below zero to over the moon. I battled for sanity, once nearly broke down. I lacked iron. A gaping wound in my internals healed slowly. I slept only occasionally, fitfully.
And they asked me to make decisions. I would have laughed, except my laugh was broken. Laughter would have required action, and I mostly operated on reaction. I was so tired, every decision culminated in taking a nap, which never materialized because hormones would not let me sleep.
The better course would have been to have waited until I was the real me. The difficulty of waiting disappears when you lose track of time, though. We need waiting. For nine months, we wait for the most important event in ages, and never, ever do we think more waiting would greatly help. But we need waiting.
If we cannot find a good rhythm, some rest, and sanity, if our smile turns upside-down more often than not, is it the time to make a life-long decision? No. If I cannot decide if I want to eat or not, is it time to decide if I want to keep my husband or not? No. Wait.
Life can fill so quickly with predicaments that weaken our intentions. A simple variation can derail me.
One day last spring was all about laundry until I woke up. Really late. The recent time change had messed up my life. I aimed at sleep, but missed the mark. When I asked a pharmacist about melatonin, he told me the brain already makes that. When I said, “I know it, but my brain is confused,” he nearly fell down laughing.
The melatonin hurt my stomach. The gift of sleep presented itself to me, those days, in three-hour shifts, with three hours between each shift.
Eventually everything catches up with everyone. The impossibility of waking at 7:30 to do all the laundry and arrive in town before 10:00 ruled my every action. Some of the laundry washed while some dried, when I left without my usual shower. Half-way to town, I remembered what I forgot: breakfast. Lunching, finally, at 2:00, left me weak.
Anyway, during that day, I experienced a refreshing visit with an old friend. She showed me her reproduction quilt. Some of the pieces are about a half-inch square. Of course, she hand-pieced it, over 2000 pieces. She lives alone in what she calls “this broken down house” and delights, as I do, in fabrics. She showed me how she quilts and how she locks her stitches. We discussed my curtains. I save this visit with her as a treat for when I need a return to reality.
Then it was on to the printer, on to the bank, on to the library, zooming as best I could without breaking any laws. Zooming to grab a short lunch, zooming to transfer laundry loads, zooming to fold and hang clothing, zooming to check chickens, zooming to make the bed (anytime before 4:30 p.m. counts), zooming to answer the phone, zooming to—does it matter?
Does it matter as much as a friend and her quilt?
My husband was out of white socks and hoped to play racquetball the next day. I paid close attention to folding his socks, stayed up late to get it done. I believe in making laundry happen for my people. It is my profession: I am an expert, and I believe a person can teach himself to enjoy any activity. I enjoy doing laundry. It calms me. I derive satisfaction from gazing at a long row of expertly-ironed, long-sleeved shirts and watching my husband leave in the morning, wearing a crisp, good-smelling shirt. It is a competition, although most women do not realize it, and secretly, I win.
Next morning, when I again awoke late, I remembered what I had forgotten: to place the folded socks where my husband could find them. They were still atop the file cabinet, where I had sleepily left them, and he was gone.
Okay, so you win, after all.
Home's Cool! 