UNM continues to take my expectations and expand on what I thought was everything about gardening and food as medicine.
When your mom tells you to make sure that you eat all your vegetables, you should listen. Food is one of, if not the most important thing required for life as we know it. The rich and nutritious ingredients feed the body of all sickness and help heal internal and external wounds. This is significant to me because I have witnessed the effects of eating good food, to help achieve healthier living and immunity. Foods have been proven to be preventative measures taken to fight off harmful disease and bacteria throughout the body, built up over long periods of time, or when the body cannot fight the battle alone.
Gardening is something that I had yet to take part in until ENG 320. The amount of labor hours, wisdom, and knowledge that is required to hold a green thumb is far more detail oriented then I previously was aware of. For our first field day at UNM’s pollinator garden, I was astonished by the vast variety of plants and herbs that were being harvested upon. Things like mint, corn, sunflowers, and many more herbs were being grown right before our eyes. With each weekly visit to the gardens, we were able to see growth and maturity in the plants as they scream “harvest” with the change in their colors. From one week to the next, there was always a significant amount of growth from the previous, a type of maturity in the plants.
For a Curandero, food for medicine is extremely important to their work because unlike most modern medicine, they rely on plants to help heal there sick. There are many different plants/ herbs that are used in a Curandero’s place of work that have many purposes. Herbs like Ginseng, Echinacea, Ginkgo, Garlic, Saw Palmetto, and St. John’s wort are all different types of herbal drugs from food that we growth in gardens. These many different types of herbs can cure anything from stomach bugs and infections, to things as simple as headaches and discomfort within the body. The use of plants and food as a healing source has been used for many years prior to modern medicine and because of the reliability of these foods, used to heal sickness within the body. Many drugs that are used/ being researched today are plant based like aspirin from willow bark or morphine from poppy plants.
In both of the Lobo Gardens that our class has participated in cultivating this semester, we were able to see, smell, and touch the different herbs that were growing throughout. I was able to learn about the many different ways that these food sources are being used in both ancient and modern medicine, as well as how people incorporate these plants into their everyday lives for good health. Gardening and Medical Herbs to me, has really compared to writing in different ways. The creation of ideas based on an experience, and the different journey that each person experiences on the same path. There is significance for every writer in a different way, in which they view the world which is eye opening to get a taste of when comparing journals and ways of writing. Food will always remain as a type of medicine that can be used for healing.
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