An Illuminating Tale Pertaining To The Plant's Usefulness...PLUS....Info On An Exciting Upcoming Giveaway!
Good afternoon Steemlings! I hope all is well in your nooks and crannies of this world. I have already had quite an interesting day. In fact, an incident that occurred just a short while ago impacted me so much that I decided to build today's post around it.
Are you wondering what hazard befell this Kat yet? Well, after a blistering twenty-four hour marathon that included two birthday parties (one that I hosted) and a wedding, I had to haul my carcass out of bed today and get cracking on some plantation maintenance. In approximately three days over forty people will be descending onto my humble chunk of heaven for our first annual Beef, Bullets, and BBQ event. In all honesty the soiree sounds more fantastical than it is probably going to be, as the whole thing is just an oversize, double 4-H meeting, but having a former Olympian and Marine Corp competitive shooter coming to speak to our shooting sports group followed by a market beef cattle show in our new arena with a guest judge is kinda more than just a group of kids meeting up and talking about project books. Plus there will be a BBQ in the middle intermission. WOO!
My previous paragraph's yammerings about the upcoming 4-H invasion of my homestead was necessary, for it sets the scene as to why I was up to what I was up to this morning when the incident occurred. I had yet to weedeat around our barn this year. Pigs don't care if the weeds are three feet tall around the barn, and I have been kinda busy, but with a bunch of kids coming over to bathe and show their steers, well, I needed to conduct a little property beautifying. While my husband rambled around on our tractor brush hogging the fields, I got out my trusty weedeater on wheels and got to work giving my barn landscape a trim.
Things were going really well until I got to the final side of the barn that needed to weedwhack. I was just weedeating along, singing Hey You by Pink Floyd at the top of my lungs when something stabbed me in the shoulder blade. Well, it felt like I was stabbed by hell fire. As I had already impaled myself in the hand with a screwdriver earlier while changing the weedeater twine, I had a pretty good pain feeling head-start for the day, and really didn't miss a beat as my shoulder caught fire. I kept weedeating and just kinda wiggled my shoulder a bit. Then, something smacked my sunglasses lens with catapult projectile-like force. Hmm...I think I have irritated some insects of the stinging kind. was my initial thought.
Suddenly, my left saddle-bagular area blossomed into flame, and I found myself picking up the evasive pace. I am not afraid of bees at all, and for the most part they are cool with me. Heck, I can even work honey bees without a suit, but the carbon monoxide puking, vibrating weedwhacking monstrosity that I was helming seemed to set the little buggars off.
As I retreated my back continued to bloom into flame city, so I made the deduction that whatever was stinging me was inside my shirt. My gratitude at living in the country flared brightly inside my form as I stripped off my shirt and hurled it away from my almost twerking self. If I did have close neighbors I suppose they would think that they crazy lady next door was just doing cardio dance in her bra and jeans, I mean, I did have my headphones on....
After some time was spent in body hugging resembling dance moves, I determined that my skin was bee free and I picked up my discarded shirt. Sure enough, as I shook it out, a yellow jacket flopped out onto the earth. I scolded it for a second and redressed. Here's a fun fact about me: I don't like to leave jobs unfinished, especially mowing and snow shoveling jobs. It kills the insides a bit too see a perfectly mowed space and then some raggedy section randomly winking it's odd angles at you like an abstract painting in a Master's museum. I only had one little chunk of weedeating left by the barn and wanted to get er done!
Back throbbing, I pushed my weedeater towards the chunk of ungroomed barnyard. SMACK A yellow jacket responded to my intrusion with a warning shot across the bow of my sunglasses and I soon found myself parking the weedeater under a tree and heading towards the Comfrey patch.
Ahhh, Comfrey. It is one of my favorite herbs. Comfrey has been growing on our farm for almost forty years, as the previous owners plunked it into the ground and it has came back every year since. I had a friend who was on rounds of antibiotics for a diabetes sore on his foot, and a daily Comfrey poultice healed and sealed that wound in three weeks. Did I mention that the wound had been on his leg for at least a year without closing!
However, the main use of the plant in these parts is on bee stings. I plucked a couple of Comfrey leaves, rubbed them between my hands Mr. Miyagi style until they were a bit sticky and slapped the Comfrey right onto my bee stings. In about a minute the pain dissipated on all five of my bee stings. The swelling also receded right nicely. Because I was stung so many times, I will probably reapply a Comfrey poultice on my stings again tonight, because the last thing I need right now with all the labor I have to do in the next few days is a swollen, painful back.
So, if you don't yet have some Comfrey growing, you should get some! Just be forewarned, the stuff spreads a bit and is almost impossible to kill. My grandma grows it in a raised box which helps to keep it contained. We are so dry here in the summers that the plant can't really spread out of its growing area, and honestly, I wouldn't care if it did!
Upcoming Giveaway Alert!
The other day my pal and author extraordinaire Jack Castle gave me some SQUEE-worthy news! The next book in his Stranger World series, Stranger Tides is getting ready to drop and he sent me a copy to give away to one of you! How neat is that!!!!
So, watch for an upcoming post about the book giveaway and if you are looking for something to read that is full of adventure, oddity, and more than a little heart-pumping in intensity, I totally recommend the first two books in the series: Stranger World and Stranger Realm.
And as more frequent, unless otherwise cited, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's non-stung and more the better for it, Canon Rebel digital camera.
Stranger Tides artwork used with permission from the author
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