Friday 9 November 2012

U3A November

The theme of this month's U3A meeting was herbal medication in the animal world with a particular emphasis on self medication of animals in the wild. One of our members did the presentation which showed fascinating insights into herbal medication both in the Ireland of her youth but also stories from her time in East Africa. As they were incidents that she herself had witnessed, the talk had a particular relevance to our studies. A great variety of cereals, herbs and grasses were found by early Neolithic times(10,000) years BCE. We were taken from stories about wild Barbary sheep  of the Sahara to Monastery gardens in the Medieval period where peasants had a duty to help in the herb gardens.
She recommended the book and film The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco which gives a wonderful background to herbal practice in an Abbey.
I have talked about flax in one of my previous blogs. Linseed oil from flax(Linum usitatissimum) is also useful as a horse poultice as it holds the heat well. It can also be given as a boiled mash to horses as it is good for general well being and gives a shiny coat.
As we were discussing the Neolithic Age earlier, I have included, on the left, a felted image from one of my cave painting based textiles showing a bison and a reindeer. To complete the piece of work I sewed the image on to a box frame and used grey and brown acrylics  painted on coarse acrylic medium as a border.
This work has now been sold.

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