Happy Mother's Day....

Mario lanza

BE MY LOVE

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Granada

The 16th Century revisited

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water..

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath.. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying . It’s raining cats and dogs.

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house..This posed a real problem in the bed-room where bugs and other drop-pings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection.. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, Dirt poor. The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was
placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying a thresh hold.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving left-overs in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been
there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old..

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, bring home the bacon. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat..

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, thus someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a ..dead ringer..

JOHNNY APPLESEED

JOHNNY APPLESEED

No one is really sure if our planet is changing because of CO2 emissions or because we
cut down the Amazon forest and sent it north where lumber is needed more, thus changing
the planetary weight distribution or if the planet is slowing down and wobbling because of
magnetic field fluctuations or other changes in the universe.

We do know, through various calculations, that 6 trees off set about one ton of CO2.

In Australia they estimated that each person produces approximately 13 tons of CO2 per year when the allowable rate is only 2 tons per year at most.
So if the calculations are correct, each person should be planting about 78 trees per year to neutralize our carbon out put.

So what do we do?


The best thing to do is to go out into your environment and see what trees grow naturally in your woods and
bring home seeds from these trees because they will be the easiest to adapt to the environment you live in.

The next step is to plant them in your yard, in some cool out of the way place.
Once the seedlings are large enough to survive on their own, with a good root system, go out and plant them
in safe areas where they have a chance to survive.

In British Columbia we have lots of Douglas Fir and pine cones galore.


Collecting them is fun in early spring and if you leave them in the sun to dry, they will open up and expose plenty of seeds.
You can then collect the seeds and plant them outside.

Sometimes you may use a zip lock bag to put pots in so that when you water them the soil does not dry.
The humidity will stay in the bag and keep the soil moist.
It usually doesn’t take long for them to sprout and then you can open the bag and treat them as normal seedlings.



This a great project to do at home and so easy and watching these babies grow gives you so much joy.

Once they are large enough (6-12 inches), they make fine gifts for all occasions especially when new babies are born. As the child grows, so will the tree and you will always know how old it is.

Protecting our environment doesn’t have to be so difficult if we just learn to enjoy it in a non destructive way
by replacing what we take out of our soil.

As I know we have many bikers crossing the country side, this is a very good thing for them to do.
Just hang a bag full of seedlings over your shoulder and stick them into the soil,
along the routes you travel, preferably, just before it rains, when you stop to take a break.

Every one can become a Johnny Appleseed, who planted seeds in 6 states before he died,
If nothing else, these trees will grow to provide free air conditioning to our overstressed planet.

In Toronto they found out planting trees on high rise roofs to be very beneficial both for the air and peoples health .
So………. become Legends in your own right, think green and have some fun planting.