Mama's Home Remedies: Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Livin, Svetlana Konnikova [classic fiction .TXT] 📗

daughter, Cypress, was beautiful and possessed a merry personality. But under the influence of her older sisters she also thought negatively about her father and mother. She was unhappy that her parents gave birth to her at night instead of day, which explained why she was so quick and easily amused.

“It was hard for the parents to be ridiculed by their children, but what could be done? Their love was blind and helpless. They tolerated their children’s taunts and rude behavior. To avoid attention, they often traveled to the mountains and lived there for days at a time.

“One day while the parents were at home, all three daughters, angered by an event outside, broke into the cabin and attacked their mother and father.

“‘Oh, skies!’ the parents prayed. ‘Is there any power that can defend us from our children?’

“Before they could finish their prayers, a voice sounded, ‘Poplar!

You forsake your parents because you are a dwarf, so become a towering 242 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

tree with no fruits or flowers. Not one bird, except the crow, will nest in you.’

“‘Pomegranate! Your wish will also come true. You’ll become a tree with pink flowers, and everyone will stop and look at them in admiration, but no one will lean over to smell these beautiful flowers because they won’t have a scent. Your fruits, bright red in the middle, will not satiate anyone’s hunger or quench anyone’s thirst because they will not ripen.’

“‘Cypress! The fate of your sisters will also be yours. You complained about your merry personality. You will become a beautiful but sad tree.’

“Startled, the girls fled from the cabin. Their parents ran after them, but their children were nowhere to be seen. Three mysterious trees stood in the yard. One raised its branches high as if it wanted to become taller. The second was covered with pink flowers. The third was frozen in sad silence.

“The trees were then named after the three daughters, Poplar, Pomegranate, and Cypress.”

“You see,” said Grandma, “three daughters of a fisherman, Poplar, Pomegranate, and Cypress, demanded too much from their parents and treated them badly until they got what they wished for. Trees are like people.”

Grandma shared with me an interesting old book on natural healing that described a rowan tree. This tree has plenty of unusual features. The rowan tree is said to bring luck and happiness to a house. I have seen how young rowans were planted near houses in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in Karelia (northwestern Russia). In Russia there are 34 kinds of fruit and decorative trees. Rowan or Mountain Cranberry tree contains sugar, organic acids, vitamins A and C, and tanning matters.

People planted these trees near their windows and believed that no wicked person would dare pass the threshold of their house. People believed and created a lovely ritual of placing a branch of rowan tree in the shoes of a future Dialogue with the Trees of Strength and Everlasting Life @ 243

bride and groom before their marriage ceremony to wish them happiness from the bottom of the heart and to prevent any misfortune in their future life “for better or worse.”

The national emblems of some countries feature images of flowers or leaves. Such countries as France, Canada, Haiti, Cyprus, and Lebanon use the lily, a maple leaf, palm, or olive branch.

I have seen photographs of famous yoga instructors sitting under a sacred tree. Yoga schools identify human beings with trees and the human body with a temple.40 A trunk of a tree is a brain; the branches are 72,000 nerves; seven flowers on a tree are seven centers of the astral body; the leaves are lungs. This is not only an analogy or a supposition, but scientists in Russia have discovered that trees vibrate and have negative or positive moods and operate with a nervous system much like that of a human.

I think Grandma was right about a lot of things. She had such a close connection to Nature and she loved her daily gardening. Sometimes she helped Grandpa care for the vineyard. Plants and trees became for her a source of education about our life, which comes from Nature, and she learned how to lead a natural life and stay away from all the toxins, chemicals, and poisons that destroy our health. She taught us with her uncompromising commitment to everything natural, clean, and healthy.

I remember a quiet afternoon in the forest near our summerhouse when I was small. The birds were twittering. A dried twig crunched under my foot and interrupted the silence of the forest and the life of its inhabitants. A narrow path led me to a clearing that was bathed in sunlight. I stopped there and listened and noticed that the forest’s silence wasn’t really silent. There was an active life going on within it, indeed. The trees worked hard, bringing out phytoncides and specific fermentation to help people, birds, animals, insects, and themselves.

I found myself near an aspen. Grandma revered this powerful tree. I saw how she had listened to the tremble or “quake” of the aspen leaves. She said that when the aspen quakes, it is driving away “evil spirits” and keeping people from diseases.

The apple