Spring cleaning is something a lot of us do every year and it includes gardening and preparing your home for the summer to come. One of the things people with gardens always have to do is pick weeds. But are all weeds equally useless?
Although I have noticed more interests in herbalism where I live and we have realized that a lot of what we call weeds actually have medicinal properties. Take dandelions, for example! Dandelions are packed with nutrients and helpful properties, all parts can be consumed and they grow in abundance! Still, a lot of people simply pick and throw them away. Well, their yard, their choice, not my business really. However, things like this make me think and wonder if we, as a race, actually see what we are really doing. If wild herbs with medicinal properties are still treated this way, it will take us a while to even come to appreciate other plants that have 'other' kind of beneficial properties. I'm talking about flower essence!
I saw an article a while ago about a campaign that encourages people to pull certain foreign, invasive weeds from their gardens here in Finland. For those who want to look up the article, here it is. it’s in Finnish, though. https://www.karjalainen.fi/uutiset/uutis-alueet/kotimaa/item/221269 Among the weeds on the list, I recognized one thing Impatiens Glandulifera, also known as Impatiens. For people who work with Bach flower remedies, you’d definitely know this flower. Even if you know nothing about Bach flower remedies, I'm sure you can guess from the name 'Impatiens' what this flower is all about. In face, this flower is even in the Rescue remedies that you can buy from a lot of shops selling natural products. However, see this spread of Impatiens as something symbolic.
Look at how people live these days.
Everything has to be fast, quick, no time to waste, always on the go, no patience, stressful. And then these flowers just grow everywhere! It’s like nature is giving the antidote for our modern lifestyle by spreading this particular weed everywhere as if to say, “look, humans, you need help, slow down”. But I doubt many of us see it this way. And then we get sick because of the way we live, then we pop a pill just to forget the problem is there, and we pull these weeds without a second thought. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against pulling weeds. I understand that too much of something is just...too much! I I also understand that you just can’t go around picking these flowers from people’s garden to make your remedies. Neither can you force people to keep them in their garden just because they are beneficial, but it’s funny to observe how we live. I might sound crazy to some but I hope others see my point. If you really look, you might see that there are a lot of medicinal weeds growing in your yards. Do you recognize them? Are they all just weeds to you? Maybe nature knows what we need and simply provides us the cure by allowing certain plants to grow in certain areas.
Note: I do not recommend just going around picking weeds/wild herbs to consume them on your own if you have no prior experience or knowledge, as some plants can be toxic.
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