Natural Medicine in the City Day 3

Last week, we completed our salve by adding in beeswax to "thicken up" the poplar bud oil infusion. We also explored the community garden to identify plants and collected some lemon balm. At the end of the day, we did a bit of acting to describe how different herbs can be used on different ailments.

We finished off our salve by adding beeswax pellets to the heated poplar bud infusion. The solidifying process quite interesting. As the pellets were melting, I thought we needed to add more since the mixture wasn't solidifying much. However, turns out that once the mixture starts cooling, it really begins to solidify. Lucky I wasn't in charge of adding the pellets, otherwise our salve would've been concrete hard!

While the salve was cooling, we walked out to the garden to identify some useful plants and collected lemon balm. There was a lot of lemon balm in the garden so we were able to harvest to our content. We were also greeted by a very enthusiastic and happy Chinese lady that gave us each a budding seed. We're not sure what sort of plant it is yet but hopefully someone will plant theirs and let us know what it is.

To end the day, we were organized into pairs to come up with a skit that identified skin and respiratory conditions and how we can use herbalism to help. My partner and I did one on eczema. The idea for our skit was how my friend has eczema and I couldn't bear being around him since he smelled and was dressed in ridiculously baggy cloths. I offered him some herbalism advice and after a week, he looked better and didn't smell anymore. I had a good time doing that skit and I think the group enjoyed it as well.

That's all for last week and will update again after today's workshop!

Pictures are uploaded here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jwong26/EYA?feat=directlink