If you are going to plant tomatoes this summer, or even if you aren’t, you may want to read my new blog on HuffingtonPost, Slow Food: A Tale of Two Tomatoes. If you haven’t tasted a true tomato, make it a point to start now! You won?t ever regret it.

Meanwhile, if you or anybody in your family suffers from poison ivy, spring is the time to get at it with this kitchen cupboard ingredient. Find out how and why, below.
And on the menu front, my family and I have been enjoying Nava Atlas’s vegetarian and vegan recipes for years. She has some wonderful books, and a great recipe-based newsletter. We are glad to share one of them here!

Articles in The Green Chi Time’s April 8th newsletter:
1. Feng Shui Your Bed
2. The Best and Safest Poison Ivy Fix for Spring
3. Seitan and Polenta Skillet with Fresh Greens, by Nava Atlas

The warm weather the East Coast enjoyed last week inspired me to set up my “summer” office, as you can see from the picture. While warm weather seems to have arrived a month early, I only saw smiles on everyone’s faces last week. If anyone doubted it, our environments do make a difference!

I’ve been enjoying settling in after my trip to the Far East. While talking with a sister the other night I was able to put to words one transformational change I’ve experienced because of the trip. When I left, I was pretty focused on lack. I’d suffered quite a bit emotionally and financially from being laid off, I was struggling to start a business, my daughter was off with her life (as one wishes for a child), and I am single. It wasn’t that I was woe is me as much as stressed. On return, after seeing the inhumanly cramped living spaces of Hong Kong, the extreme poverty in Cambodia, and feeling the lack of breathable air in Hanoi, I am filled with gratitude and appreciation for how much abundance I have in my life. What a beautiful change in me; what a correction to what is true.

Articles in The Green Chi Time’s April 6th newsletter:

1. Tick Repellent - Detox Diva DIY
2. Shopping Recycled: Second Hand Stores in New York City, by Dorian Yates
3. Aromatherapy Bath Oil DIY - Renew, Replenish, Revive

I had a healthy black bear in my front yard the other day, and this isn’t an April Fool’s joke! I think it may have hibernated nearby, as I last saw it the day before Thanksgiving, and not since, until now. The bear had a lush, shiny coat, and seemed docile and focused only on the bird seed and compost bin (see picture), not me or my dogs!

Combining seeing the bear with many days out of electricity due to a winter storm a month ago, I was brought down to Earth with a thud. Technology seems to increasingly separate us from the world “out there,” and yet what a very thin line is between us in reality. It behoves us to remember and teach the know-how of living with nature. I’m scrambling to learn it about black bears, and I’m going to be sure to gather a lot of kindling this summer, for my wood stove!

Articles in The Green Chi Time’s April 1st newsletter:
1. Nontoxic Spring Cleaning Kit - DIY Diva
2. Outwit Dust Mites
3. Simple Shaker Lemon Pie, by Debra Lynn Dadd

I do love Aloe Vera. It’s gel, so easy to get from the succulent leaves, must be the world’s gift to skin. It just heals, heals, heals. Well known for healing the skin of burn victims, it is also wonderful for sun burns! And small burns, such as from touching the hot outdoor grill by mistake.

My teeth were X-rayed this morning, the full mouth, so lots of pictures were taken. It had been years since I had such a full dental X-ray set done, which is good, but I never like the idea of even these mild x-rays going through my brain and soft tissue. I am sure that in another 50 years or so X-rays will be considered barbaric, but here we are now, having to live with it (or let cavities and bone loss go unnoticed).

Cancer recovery sites on the Internet are full of recommendations for using baking soda and sea salt as a way to remediate radiation and X-rays. Hot baths open the pores of the skin, and the salts help them detox, by pulling the poisons out of the cell through osmosis. A macrobiotic diet rich in sea vegetables was further reportedly instrumental in helping one hospital have 100 percent success in helping their patients recover from radiation sickness after the bombing of Hiroshima.

I have heard the recommendation in so many places that I came home and made myself a hot bath with 1 cup of of sea salt with seaweed, and 1 cup of Epsom Salts! I had read that you can feel enervated after such a bath, and I certainly was. I had to sit down for about 15 minutes, but that was pleasant enough because I felt nice and relaxed.

I don’t know if I mitigated any of the damage from the X-rays, if there was any, but I felt by having such a bath that I was taking care of myself in a protective way. That is worth a lot to me, since I usually don’t take the time….

Note that those with high blood pressure, or are who pregnant, are advised against hot baths.

Half art and half technology, Flowform sculptures allow water to cascade in a series of figure eights, replicating the path water takes in undisturbed flows found in nature. The natural movement of the water allows for better oxygenation, and it improves the water’s capacity to support life-forms. Flowforms can regenerate water’s natural power and are used around the worldin agricultural irrigation and sewage treatment systems.

Even Prince Charles of Great Britain uses Flowforms for the sewage system at Hygrove Castle.

Flowforms are also beautiful, sculptural designs, reflecting inventor John Wilkes study of sculpture at the Royal College or Art.

The book shown here is John Wilke’s classic book, Flowforms:  The Rhythmic Power of Water.