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

October 4–October 13

Maple, the tree of Determination

April 11–April 20

October 14–October 23

Walnut, the tree of Passion and Power

April 21–April 30

October 24–November 11

Chestnut, the tree of Honesty and Quality

May 15–May 24

November 12–November 21

256 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

Ash, the tree of Flexibility and Healing

May 25–June 3

November 22–December 1

Hornbeam, the tree of Loyalty and

June 4–June 13

Protection

December 2–December 11

Fig, the tree of Comfort and Balance

June 14–June 23

December 12–December 21

Oak, the tree of Vitality and Power

March 21

(spring vernal equinox)

Birch, the tree of Light and Beginning

June 24

(summer solstice)

Olive, the tree of Happiness and Prosperity

September 23

(autumn vernal equinox)

Beech, the tree of Necessity and Patience

December 22

(winter solstice)

Yew, the tree of Survival and Death

November 3–November 11

Dialogue with the Trees of Strength and Everlasting Life @ 257

This is interesting to know:

^ In federal reserves and national parks, the United States and Canadian governments have the largest area of protected forests in the world–greater than Russia, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Brazil, and the United Kingdom combined. Canada has nearly 86.5 million acres of protected forests, the largest protected area in the world. Canada’s area of protected forests is equivalent to the size of Germany. National parks in 49 states of the United States account for another 83 million acres (33.6 million hectare) of forest and no forest land.

^ North America’s forests are abundant and growing. The forests in the United States and Canada make 15 percent of the Earth’s forest cover. The coniferous trees of the Pacific Northwest, the broadleaf forests of Appalachia, and the mixed forests of the United States South support a large number of diverse species of wildlife.

^ According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, forest planting in the United States currently averages about one million hectares a year.

^ The average North American uses 18 cubic feet (½ cubic meter of wood) and 749 pounds (340 kilograms) of paper per year, equal to a 100-foot (30 meter) tree.

^ The single oldest living tree on Earth is a twisted bristle-cone pine named “Methuselah.” It grows in the White Mountains of California. It is 4,723 years old and there are other pines in the area that are nearly as old. These trees have been growing since the time when Egyptians were building the pyramids.

^ The tallest tree in the world is a 367.5-foot (112 meters) redwood in Montgomery Woods State Preserve in northern California. This tree is 63.5 feet (19.4 meters) taller than the Statue of Liberty and over twice as high as Niagara Falls.

^ More than 5,000 products are made from trees: houses, fences, furniture, baseball bats, books, newspapers, tires, cellophane, fabric rayon, and explosives.

^ Wood fiber derived from the trees and cal ed cel ulose is one of ingredients in production of ice cream, toothpaste, and shampoo. 258 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

Each disease has its own healing herb.

—Russian proverb

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Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come.

—Chinese proverb

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Tall oaks from little acorns grow.

—Anonymous

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It is remarkably pleasant occupation, to lie on one’s back in a forest and look upwards! It seems that you are looking into a bottomless sea, that it is stretching out far and wide below you, that the trees are not rising from the earth but, as if they were the roots of enormous plants, are descending or falling steeply into those lucid, glassy waves.

—Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883), Russian writer

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. . . because the Forest will always be there . . .

and anybody who is friendly with bears can find it.

—A. A. Milne (1882–1956), English poet and writer

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Dialogue with the Trees of Strength and Everlasting Life @ 259

We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this stormy day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense.

—John Muir (1838–1914), Scottish-born American naturalist ƒ

. . . old Indian teaching was that it is wrong to tear loose from its place on the earth anything that may be growing there. It may be cut off, but it should not be uprooted. The trees and grass have spirits.

—Wooden Leg, 19th-century American (Cheyenne) warrior

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I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

—Willa Cather (1876–1947), American novelist

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Those beeches and smooth limes—there was something enervating in the very sight of them; but the strong knotted old oaks had no bending lan- guor in them—the sight of them would give a man some energy.

—George Eliot [Mary Anne Evans] (1819–1880), English novelist ƒ

The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), American essayist and poet 260 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

Chapter 13

As Isis, So Is Mama . . .

She existed before time began. Time was one of Her children!

—Nancy Blair, The Book of Goddesses

As Isis, the Egyptian goddess; Kali, the Indian goddess; Tara, the Mother Goddess of Tibet and India; Greek goddesses Hera, Demeter, and Gaia; and the tender and powerful Mother Nature are archetypes of the Mother, so is Mama. Thus, we all are. We are the sense of the Universe’s existence. We conceive, give the birth to, and hold a new life, a new generation.

The mother archetype drives women to be generous; to nourish, provide, and care for others; to