Essential Oils

Essential Oils: Natural aromatics are the gifts of magic, beauty, medicine, flavor, and life enhancements from plants. These special scents are what give herbs and spices their specific flavors and characteristics, flowers and fruit their perfumes.  

Think about when you peel an orange and the bitter juice squirts out of the peel. That's the essential oil squirting of the pockets. These glandular cells that contain the essential oil are volatile, meaning it can easily evaporate, perfuming the air. Orange yields many different essential oils.

Pictured above is the familiar garden Mother's Day flower, daffodil. Native to the Middle East and the Mediterranean, it has been naturalized in Southern France. It is cultivated mostly for its flowers. More.

Popular garden plants

Peppermint is a common herb, that easily grown in a variety of climates, and soil types. 

The much loved Lavender comes in many varieties, 3 of which are grown specifically for their essential oils. Lavender is an essential part of your natural 1st aid kit.

Patchouli (usually potted in the West) gained popularity as the aroma of the 1960's. It is widely used for a variety of purposes, and in my experience, is either loved or despised. There is not much emotional tolerance in the middle ground for this perfume. 

Most associated with the cuisines of India and it's neighbors, lemongrass is a tall tough grass, with a citrus association in the West.

Rosemary, a common culinary herb, comes from many countries, each one a little bit different.

Essential oils from trees

Cinnamon, most commonly known in the West, as a pie and cookie spice.

Amber is a black, tar like resin, tapped from trees. When dried, it is dark, golden brown, with a sweet aroma.

Our apple perfume is a custom blend of essential oils and apple essences.

There are over 700 different species of eucalyptus, of which at least 500 produce some sort of essential oil. Our choice is in the perfume class.

The uses of tea tree are based on a very long oral history from the aboriginal people of Australia.

Fir is native to the US West coast. We call it the generic pine.

When you think of clove, it's usually related to cuisines or toothaches. In addition to those uses, clove bud also makes a lovely and functional perfume.

One of my favorite fruits, grapefruit are native to a few countries in the world, but the essential oil is mainly produced in California, USA.

Customize your 1st aid kit with essential oils. Read about it here

I always have a 1st aid kit on hand, even if it's just the one in the bathroom closet. It contains:

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THINK

soap and money

How much soap money does a shower cost you?

Let's say you spend $3.00 on a bar of soap and it lasts for 7 days of showers. That's $.43 per shower. 

For your next bar of soap, you spend $8.50. That seems like a lot of money, except it lasts for 8 weeks or 56 showers. That's $.15 cents per shower. F.Y.I.: One bar lasts me and Andy 6 weeks of daily showers - 84 showers.

Good soap is cost effective. More

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