It is plants that make a
home
| Natural medicine, stress reliever, air cleaner... the uses of plants
are many |
GREEN THUMBS: Plants add charm to a building
Your cat and you may have many differences, like for example,
the tricky question about her favourite food being fish and you being an
absolute vegetarian who hates the smell of fish! This stalemate may continue
till you start tolerating fishy smells or your cat turns vegetarian. But in one
respect, you and your cat may be in accord — the bougainvillea bush in your
garden.
Your cat loves it and you do too because it is as easy to
look after as your cat. It is a plant that grows for you even when you totally
forget about it! Even if you don't water it for many days or even weeks, the
bougainvillea will be flowering for you and will delight you one fine day when
you notice it!
Plants, people and animals have a bond that has now been
recognised universally. The bougainvillea that pleases your cat enriches your
soul and garden. Petting the cat that lives with you has now been found to be
(through many studies) one of the most powerful methods of reducing stress.
Everyday you will find something new about the plant in your house or the one
blooming in your neighbour's garden. Take the case of the amazing aloe vera that
grows on the roadside. If you are alone in the house with no doctor around, and
you burn your hand while frying puris or lighting the gas, you can immediately
use the gel from your aloe if it is growing in the kitchen. Aloe juice works to
heal burns, frostbite, and many other skin wounds. It coaxed the World Health
Organisation to include it in the manual for health workers called "The use
of traditional medicine in primary health care."
For healing burns, you just apply the juice or the pulp of
the aloe's fleshy part of the leaf externally. For sprains, rub the pulp or the
juice gently over the affected part two or three times a day. It is like having
a gentle, quiet doctor in the house. A magical remedy for curing a cold is
ginger tea. While all medicines for a cold take seven days to cure, ginger tea
dries up your nose in just two or three days. It is tastier too than any
allopathic medicine. By growing aloe and ginger in your house you have two of
the best friends as free doctors anytime you need them. Recent research gives
thousands of new and exciting discoveries from the world of plants. Rose petals,
leaves, rose hips and seed are medicinal. Herbalists use rose hips as one of the
best sources of Vitamin C. They are used with other treatments for colds, flu
and depression. Gandhiji chewed on rauwolfia serpentine while meditating!
It is used to treat insect bites and helped to make the drug to treat
hypertension.
There are 50 plants that are now being used to help clean up
indoor air in houses, malls, hospitals, colleges, schools and many other places.
All we need to do is to grow them inside the house. The chrysanthemum,
philodendron, poinsettia, croton are just some of them.
Plants can teach you to create three special gardens just for
the disabled to delight in. You can create a garden that the blind cannot see,
but can hear! There are around 10 to 14 plants that the blind can enjoy the
sounds of! Then there is the garden of touch! There are 10 plants to create a
garden of touch just for the disabled!
The universe has gifted us with plants to comfort us for the
misery and mess and malice of life that springs up from its darker corners. When
we care for plants they paint their colours of grace over the pettiness and the
puerile patches of daily living. What more can we ask for or need?
Courtesy: Property
Plus, The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/pp/2006/11/25/stories/2006112500240300.htm
