Home Farm Herbery

Ask Arlene about tinctures and other things©

By Arlene Wright-Correll

A recent email question asks, “Last week you wrote about tinctures in you article. Can you tell me how to use them?”

Tinctures are easily assimilated by the body, convenient to use and offer more potent medicinal properties than dried herbs or capsules.

The average shelf life of a tincture, when stored in a sealed glass jar and kept in a dark, cool cabinet is 5 years.

When using tinctures I recommend adding the suggested amount to a glass of water, juice or tea and then drink immediately.

Tinctures can be taken directly by the mouth.

There are tinctures that can be applied topically for certain skin issues and/or minor wounds.

Make sure you know you plants because proper dosage depends on the herb and alcohol strength of the extract. When you are not sure consult a certified herbalist and when you have something really wrong with you get yourself to a doctor fast. Remember herbs, tinctures have side effects just like prescribed or un-prescribed drugs.

We also received the following email question, “Can you tell me something about art?”

Wow! That is a tremendous question that would take volumes to cover. However, let’s just talk about the oldest form of art which is visual art. This would include creation of images or objects in fields including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media and we are not even talking about poetry, music, writing and many other things.

We can go a long way back to where no one would have been more divided than Plato and Aristotle on the question concerning the importance of art, with Aristotle strongly supporting art in general and Plato generally being opposed to its relative importance.

We have a cave painting of a horse from the Lascaux caves, circa 16,000 BP and that is really a long way back so you have a long row to hoe with many, many years of study once you decide to find out exactly what is art.

May the Creative Force be with you as you tread the earth lightly!

Arlene Wright-Correll

Home Farm Herbery LLC