Of course organic cereals mean healthier and safer farms but it’s easy to overlook the fact that farmlands were build over natural habitats, destroying homes for all the wildlife that used to live there. And it’s a sad equation because the balance of human inhabitations against wildlife inhabitation can never be in equilibrium, but by selecting a cereal company that is conscious towards its product’s impact on the habitat of the wildlife we’re increasing the animals chance of survival.

Now so far, it seems Jordan Cereals is the only cereal company that insists the farmers who grow the grain that goes into their products, dedicate land specifically to create homes for wildlife. As they proudly declare on their site, “All the Conservation Grade farmers who grow grain for Jordans use 10% of their land just so that British wildlife, such as barn owls can have a home.” Jordan cereals have been dedicating their efforts to conserving the British Countryside for over 25 years.

So when you make that conscious choice to select cereal such as Jordan’s, you’re pledging help for the wildlife (helps that Jordan’s advert is so adorable).

Now even if you aren’t into the idea of dabbling into clothes making, be it for fun or as a prospectful career move surely you too recognize how important using the right fabric is. I mean have you ever been drawn into shop from the street by what appears to be a magnificent dress on display only to walk out empty handed because the fabric wasn’t right?

As a well informed eco loving consumer, your knowledge about fabric shouldn’t stop at what makes the clothes look or feel right. You should be aware of the green alternatives out there. There are quite a few you know and we’re going to share about some of them here. Mind that this list isn’t exhaustive:

1.    Flax Fiber (Flax Linen)
Made from: Fibers from the stalks of the flax plant – Linum Usitatissimum.
2.    Bamboo Fiber
Made from: The from the pulp of the bamboo grass.
3.    Hemp
Made from : Hemp fibers (primary and secondary bast fibers)
4.    Jute
Made from : The natural fibers obtained from the bark of the jute plant.
5.    Soy Silk
Made from: Soy protein fibre (SPF) which is obtained as a byproduct of the manufacturing of soybean cake/tofu.
6.    Milk Silk
Made from:  Milk casein fiber (milk protein)
7.    Ramie
Made from: The fibers of China Grass
8.    Modal
Made from: The fibers of the beech wood trees.
9.    Organic Cotton
Made from: The cotton plant that is grown without the use of pesticides and insecticides under a more sustainable condition.
10.    Tencel
Made from: Innovative cellulose fibers

All of these fibers spun out into yarn and then weaved into fabrics have different textures and uses but one quality they share in common is how they are all good for the environment and safe for you.

But there are many who come too quickly to judge this as a very sinful against the environment indulgence – they argue about how much water is wasted but I don’t quite agree.

Here are the facts:

A bath tub can limit your consumption of water usage because there’s only so much you can fill into one-i.e. tubs have fix consumptions and the standard one probably holds 24 gallons. And you can always be more considerate by doing the following:

1.    Check to ensure that you have a good fitting plug which avoids the water from leaking and us from refilling.
2.    Don’t fill it to the brim; fill only as much as it takes to submerge your body. The smaller you are the less water you need.
3.    Use non-toxic eco friendly bath products so it won’t poison the water and you can reuse it in your garden – granted it’s a bit of work getting them from your tub into your garden but if you want to feel better about your bath then there’s no easy way out unless you have been mindful and fortunate enough to be able to install a grey water system for your house.

Now another interesting thing to note is how bathtubs aren’t the biggest ‘consumers’ of water in our house – it’s the toilet and un-minded showers we take each day that are the lead culprits for that.

Red
Red’s a pretty easy colour to get from nature. But the classic rainbow’s red is a bright one so that helps us narrow down the search to the Madder Root which gives a deep, rich red hue. The root of the madder plant itself is not red, but contains alizarin, which can be made to produce red lakes of several shades.

Orange
Orange is another colour that you can find various options for. But I’m looking for a cheery orange to match the madder red. So either paprika, turmeric or safflower petals would do just fine.  The intensity of the orange you get varies between these 3 herbs, but I would stick with safflower because it gives a rich orange-yellow colour.

Yellow
Anatto seeds give a lovely light yellow to yellow-orange colour.  Alternatively a good yellow can be achieved by using the petals of the calendula flower.

Green
Kelp/seaweed gives the most amazing green, but they do tend to have a bluish tinge. So if we want a more grass green colour then the extract of wheatgrass would be perfect!

Blue
Woad (first year leaves), the miracle Isatis tinctoria used in the treatment of breast cancer, colds and throat infections will give our soap a beautiful sky blue colour.

Indigo
Well the obvious choice is indigo! But this colour is really strong so a little goes a long way and the Japanese Indigo flower will give the perfect shade.

Violet
Alkanet root will give the soap a beautiful pinkish purple colour if we keep the soap white.

And there we have it! Natural colours to make a rainbow of soap!

I’m sure it isn’t just me who notices how dry skin, puffy eyes and dark circles are just so much more amplified during winter. On some days I’m even convinced that we age overnight during the freezing season. And the experts confirm this observation as they give their scientific reasons for it – lower level of vitamin D in the body during the colder months.

Vitamin D is something we can get naturally from the sun, along with serotonin which is that feel good chemical your body produces. So to beat the winter eye bags here’s what we need to do.

1.    Get sufficient sleep with naps in between during the day (15 mins is good enough)

2. Watch the diet – if you ever wondered why you’re always hungry when it’s cold, well it’s got to do with the fact that the lack of sunlight reduces the effectiveness of the hormone leptin. Leptin is what tells us we’re full. Also, cut down on the salt!

3. Increase the vitamin D in the body through supplements but bear in mind that  vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that is naturally present in very few foods, so your choices may come limited. Known rich sources are salmon, sardines, cow’s milk, goat’s milk, shiitake mushrooms, and eggs.
So there you have it…the winter eye bag mystery solved! Let’s just see if the solutions work.

However…I’ll have to admit that today’s post was in a way inspired by recent events (ashes to ashes, dust to dust…) but with a slight twist you could say…as we’re going to be looking at an interesting gift idea!

Now I don’t know about you but I like my gifts to stand for something. I like them to be special not because I want it to stand out in a crowd, no. I want it to be special because it represents my thoughts and wishes for the recipient.

So what is this special unique gift you ask? Well the next chance I get, some people are going to get “eco-worms” in a box!
I can tell you’re already giving me that look of absolute disgust, but bear with me for a bit more before you throw the idea out the window. Trust me; the worms will be a welcome.

If you look past their wriggly exterior, you’ll see that worms have an uncanny ability to turn waste into living bacteria that posses the power to transform poor quality soil into a rich, living growing medium for plants and crops! Which really makes them the perfect gift for someone who is a keen supporter of keeping an eco friendly home and loves tending to the garden.

A gift of eco-worms will be a welcomed surprise as you learn about how much fun and contributing, having a worm farm in your garden can be to the environment. A worm farm will help you turn vegetable and fruit scraps into great potting soil or soil amendment through worm castings and worm tea – both odorless and priceless for your plants. Of course don’t be mistaken to think that they are made from mushed up worms – they are made by worms, not from them.

My friend was a great many things but above all he was a dutiful son, a wonderful brother, a loving husband and a magnificent friend. Surely the memory of a man so great cannot become extinguished with the last breath he draws? I think regardless of which faith you keep; when we are faced with death…we cannot help but wonder what is next.

Now I do appreciate that the presence of death, is hardly a time to think about eco sustainability and let us face facts…death or how we lay the body to rest after is anything but eco-friendly – think of the embalming fluids (formaldehyde), the expensive caskets, the carbon dioxide that your loved one becomes when cremated.

But it’s something that has to be done. Laying our loved ones to rest in an honourable and complete manner is necessary for closure. I recommend that you read this article by Gloria Campos which is entitled “8 Environmentally Friendly Burial Alternatives.. or 8 Options to the Boring Old Coffin”. It’s absolutely brilliant and quite inspiring.

She gives you insight into a world of eco-burial as you probably never imagine existed.

However, there is one eco-sustainable burial that isn’t on her list and that’s the POETREE.

POETREE is the brilliant brainchild of one Margaux Ruyant, a young French Inventor with the DSK International School of Design Pune, India. She designed a funeral urn that progressed with the emotional stages of grief and mourning.

The ashes of the departed is placed in the urn and a boxwood tree (an evergreen shrub) in planted in a biodegradable pot and placed onto the ashes within the urn. As the tree begins to grow, the pot will biodegrade, the soil within will mixed into the ashes and the roots of the tree will begin to grow into the mixture. This will take sometime and by the time it happens, it will be synonymous with the stage of letting go.

The POETREE is now ready to be planted into the garden where after a while, the cork based urn will disintegrate into the earth leaving only the tree and the ceramic ring top which will serve as a living memory of a great life now departed.

The true beauty of the POETREE is not so much it’s green effect but rather how it is designed to walk the stages of grief with you.

And as I sat over the dining table listening to my grandaunt talk about how she had missed me, how she distinctively remembered me as a child, the warm waters of the ocean we had visited together…I realized this dear little old lady was coming on well into her 80s yet her memory was as sharp as ever.

In her lovely English kitchen she was making roast for dinner and suddenly the room would be filled with stories about how she had taught mummy to make roast over 30 years ago. In her garden where I picked the last of the lavenders before the frost would take them, she told me more stories about how we used to tie lavender stalks together and put them in the cupboards…the mints and herbs in the garden- those brought on even more memories.

Then I remembered something about the human race. We can forget names and faces but we never forget a scent and the fact is…every memory had a scent. And that scent would be the key to the memory we safely store away in our minds. Being back home, the scent of home reminded me of the many things I used to do – things that I did not consciously remember.

This past October was a very special month for me and I know the combination scent of lavenders, apple mint, roast in the oven, waitrose pure fabric conditioner will be the key to that memory.

So for this Christmas, if you’re starting to fuss about what to give the older folks…why not give them a memory key to help them unlock the happy memories they once lived? Homemade scented sachets, tailored to a memory would be a very personal and meaningful gift.

My relationship broke down while I was away, well okay maybe it broke down a long time ago. But my partner had decided my absence was the perfect time to say that we were not right for each other and left all he had to say in an 83 words long, Dear John Letter – not even a sentimental conventional hand penned one by the way, but a short and poorly written/thought out electronic version which ended with “Let’s call it quits. Good Nite. Bye”.

Now before anyone feels sorry for me, I’m here to tell you don’t because it was for the better. And it is at this precise moment that I could see every leaf on the trees around me. I did not shed a single tear but instead I woke up to realize that this unhealthy relationship I had had given me Mibyou.

Mibyou is an ancient Chinese pathology term for a condition that not on its own a disease but headed into the direction of developing one. I guess years of stress and clogged up dissatisfaction will do that to you as it begins to take a toll on your body. Common symptons of Mibyou are the following:

1.    Cold hands and feet
2.    Unshakeable fatigue
3.    Poor appetite
4.    Paleness

I was pale, I never had much appetite and while my hands and feet were not cold, I was always tired. In general I’ve always been in pretty good health but I can’t even begin to count the number of times, just this year alone that I’ve been falling ill with respiratory issues.

Being over-medicated is not my idea of a cure either because that only treats the symptoms…never the cause. Mibyou is not a death sentence. It can be improved by enhancing the self-regulating function of the body. Removing the element of stress and taking some herbal liqueur such as the Japanese traditional herbal medicinal preparation- such as Yomeishu or Choya Umeshu can do wonders for you.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss how we can get better health with a cocktail of Umeshu!

Flowers

 
Daffodil.
The lovely yellow gold flowers of William Wordsworth’s touching poem are as beautiful as they are lethal but mainly only in the bulbs. You see the bulbs of a daffodil can be deadly is ingested because they contain a crystallized toxin that induces vomiting, diarrhea and potentially death. Bear in mind that the narcissus and daffodil are essentially the same species of plant and thus carries the same threat of poisoning.
Hyacinth
If you ever watched that old series Keeping up Appearances then you’d be familiar with the name Hyacinth Bucket who was no doubt likely names after the beautiful purple flower. And like the daffodil,, the bulbs of a Hyacinth can also cause death. So if you have them in your garden, be sure to keep your pets away from them.
Fruits
Apples
Even if you don’t tend to gardens, surely you’ve got this one in your kitchen. Apples come from the same plant family as roses, almonds, cherries and peaches. Thus in fact all the seeds of all of these plants are poisonous and should be avoided because they contain a glycoside called amygdalin that can cause cyanide poisoning. If you have dogs at home then you’d have been warned not to give them any apple seeds/pips, but the same really applies to humans. If you swallowed a pip or two whilst having the fruit, I trust it would be fine as the body can expel/detoxify a small dose of cyanide compound. In fact if you didn’t break the seed/pip when ingesting you would only absorb a minimal amount of the toxic compounds. It is when you chew the seeds that bring on the real poisoning. So watch these fruits and best remove the seeds before giving them to your children.
Berries

Elderberries
If you’ve seen this plant you’ll be inclined to admit how striking it looks. The berries make wonderful jams; the flower petals make lovely tea and together amazing wine but don’t go anywhere near the roots because those are just poison.