In December of last year, my brother came and replaced the floor in the house we were renting and made a few repairs.  We got to the point where I had sold everything I could to make ends meet and we were still behind so at the end of February, we came up to Indiana to spend a few weeks with my mother-in-law.  What belongings we still have are in storage units across 3 states.  It should get consolidated next month.  We will be here until about mid-April.  I need to get a feel of the property in Oklahoma so I can plant food and herbs for the coming months.  My husband wants me to stay here until we are able to save for an RV but looking at the finances and the drain our stay is having on her limited resources, we cannot do that to my mother-in-law.  She is also allergic to cats and I have 5...  The kitten my kids got last year had a kitten of her own in January. 

The point of this was to save as much as possible but the kids have needs, especially educational - I have to get some homeschool books for them and I have to contribute to the utility and food bills plus there are needed repairs on my truck which may or may not get done before we leave here.  I'm hoping once we are on the property in Oklahoma, I can resume my normal blog posts but that will remain to be seen until I get there.  I will need to have access to my research materials and we will need to do something to boost the internet signal on the property I think,  it's barely present now. 

My thinking is, if we can reduce the bills as much as possible, I should be able to save up enough money to hire a publicist so I can have the proper help to sell my books,  It does me no good to write if noone is even going to see the end product!  I will also need a proper house at some point.  Living in a tent is not a good thing long-term.  At this point, I'm just grateful for my health, family and a warm place to sleep. 

Love and Light!

I finally got my book, Details About Rosemary published on Amazon.  It is available on kindle and as a paperback (links below).  I got the e-mail that they are ready for purchase but when I typed in the name of the book, it did not come up on the first page.  It did come up when I typed in my name.  The Kindle version is $5 and the book is $19.  The book scosts a little more than I wanted it to be because I wanted the pictures to be color rather than black and white.  This helps the reader identify the plant better.

In other news, my hair is improving by washing twice instead of once each day but it's not happy about it.  It will get a break once it's no longer sticky but at least it doesn't look like a clump of spaghetti any more!  I'm still plugging along on my rune book. 

I'm trying to decide if I should start more mint plants now or wait until I move.  That is the next herb book on the horizon.  Growing the plant and taking images all year long takes the longest amount of time because I need to show how the plant looks throughout the year for the botanical section of the book.  Mint also doesn't travel well so it is another thing to consider.  I may just put the mints off to the following book and choose an herb that is okay way with moving.  Much to think about!

Love and Light!

I got my book, Details About Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) published here on my site today!  To access it, you will need to click on the Book Membership link and pay $10.  This is a monthly membership which will permit access to all of my books (though this is the only one here at the moment). The book is in website format, no downloads.  This book took over a year to research and write.  If there are any problems, please let me know by commenting below.  The membership purchase was set up by the platform but I created the links between the chapters so human error may exist. I hope you enjoy!

As my long-term followers know, I have been working on changing my diet and have had some detoxing results.  One such result was it enabled me to get off all prescription medication and with the help of an herbal tea, I got my thyroid in check.  One rather annoying thing is the topic for today.  Over the past few months, I have had an issue where hygiene products that I have used for years have an intolerable odor to me.  Even being around others, they STINK!  It's their laundry soap, their make-up, their shampoo!  I already couldn't stand the scent of perfume.  Being in public is an assault on the nostrils!  I gladly give people that 6 feet of space because I don't want to smell them!  I have had to change the products I use on myself as well. 

Recently, the "natural" shampoo I have been using that has rosemary in it (GREAT for the hair and scalp) has made my head and face itch.  I am tired of playing product roulette!  For soap, I have been using Dr. Bonner's and it's amazing.  It is also 18 in 1 meaning it can be used on almost everything.  Including hair.  Now, in the past I tried that and it made my hair all sticky and nasty so I quit and went back to a product with the word "shampoo" on it.  This time around on the Dr. Bonners soap, after about 3 days of using it, my head started itching again and the sticky-nasty came back.  I realized this is simply cleaning the build-up of the fake natural products off of my hair.  I did some looking and it can take up to 6 weeks to get this crap out of my hair!  I'm going crazy with the itchy!  My hair is so sticky, I can't get a brush through it.  I am now washing it twice each day to try to expedite this. 

I share all of this to remind people that just because it says natural or has the word "natural" in the name, doesn't mean it is truly a clean product.  Do your research on the products you use on your body or get them from a trusted source or make them yourself.  Your health, or your hair, may depend on it!

If any of my friends sell natural products, send me your info and I'll add it to my one of the pages I have on here so people can find HEALTHY products easier.

The greenhouse did survive.  I have purchased a replacement even though I don't plan to put it up until we get moved.  My avocado trees will need a secure place as the weather turns cold.

Since I am still having trouble raising the funds to get my rosemary book published, I am going to have to switch my focus for now.

My home is in need of work on the electric and I have been packing as much as I can when I can because it involves opening the walls, meaning I can't have my kids in this house while the work is getting done.  Yes, some of the funds I'm asking for will go toward this effort since I write in my home. This means all of the herbal books I use as sources are in boxes so I can't push on with my herbal blog until this work is done. 

What this means is I had this as a daily thing before I switched to focus on my Rosemary book full-time.  I will switch to posting on my spiritual blog, attempting to do this daily (things are still crazy here).  I am a home-school mom and just started my daughter in preschool.  I taught a lot while I was in the military but all those students already knew how to read and write...  This is a whole new monster!  Fortunately there are a lot of resources out there and I bought books for a friend a few years ago and she gave them back when she was done.  Preschool didn't even exist when I was growing up so this is a very new thing.  I introduced my daughter to scissors yesterday and a white board and dry-erase markers today.  She is quite happy!

Love and Light!

It has been 2 months since my last book update and I don't have much to report.  I was able to fix the issue with my images so the book is able to be published but the finances to get it published are still not there.  I have begun the process to go LLC and have been hit with 2 bills on that that I cannot currently pay.  My husband, a truck driver, has gotten one paycheck in the past 5 weeks.  The household bills have not been paid for the month much less to get this portion taken care of.  I have started a GoFundMe but have not gotten any help through it yet.  Someone told me I needed a bio and my initial thought was "that's on my website."  Then I realized there is a bio section on GoFundMe so I have now completed that portion. 

I am not accustomed to asking for help, in any way.  As my followers know, I'm retired Air Force.  I'm used to serving others, not having others helping me.  This entire process is foreign to me.  This has been a serious "swallow my pride" moment.  I'm always the strong one, lending my shoulder when others need one.  Now I find myself needing a shoulder and I realize there isn't one.  It's a very difficult situation to be in. 

On a brighter side, my daughter turns 4 next week.  She will have a fairly good day thanks to having a mommy that likes to buy things on clearance and put them up until these special days come around.  The struggles mentioned above will not be apparent to her young eyes.  We, as always, will celebrate when daddy gets home next. I have started her on pre-school.  I was going to wait until she was officially 4 but I got the development questionnaire from her doc and discovered there were a few things she is supposed to know how to do so I decided to go ahead and start her on the collection of books I have accumulated over the past few years on how to teach your child pre-school stuff.  I spent over a decade teaching other people's grown kids.  Now I get to experience teaching children that have yet to learn to read and write.

She and her brother will never understand how difficult these last 4 years have been.  Being a full-time student while raising children in their most tender ages was the biggest challenge I have ever faced.  I had to sacrifice a lot, including friendships of people who simply couldn't understand there wasn't enough time on the clock to fulfill their expectations.  Being a veteran doesn't make me a super hero.  I'm still human.  This has been a very lonely ride but at least I can say I've gotten this far, somehow.  I know the next leg will be incredible for myself and my family.  I just have to get over this last hurdle, which feels like a monstrous one from where I'm standing right now. 

Part of me wishes I had decided to go through a regular publisher but I don't want to be a "starving artist".  My work takes a lot of time and effort and a publisher will not compensate me appropriately for the effort these books take.  I MUST continue to go it "alone".  But this "alone" needs a leg up.  Not one person builds their business by themselves and I am no exception.  Once I get the help I need, I can then resume helping others with my published works.  Thank you for reading and understanding and sticking with me for as long as you have.  Much love and appreciation! 

Love and light!

I wanted to give everyone on update on how publication is going.  I have to say "not good" but I'm working on it.  I edited the book for errors (I do not have the money to pay an editor yet) and went to upload it to find out my images were not high enough in resolution.  Without images, there is NO book because that is what the botanical portion of the book is about: images of the rosemary plant in various stages of growth.  This morning I discovered that Word is set to default reducing the resolution of the images so I may be able to get this fixed and go on with publication.  The real sticking point is going to be not being a LLC.  We recently had a major issue with my husband and got hit with a huge debt as a family because he is a sole-proprietor instead of a LLC.  I will not risk that happening with me.  Therefore I can get it ready to go but I can't hit that "publish" button until I can change my status to LLC and have this function like that form of business.  I have learned first-hand just how expensive and painful being a sole-prop can be and I cannot risk that even further.  To file as a LLC requires money I do not have.  I will get as far in the process as I can and let you know when my book is available.

Thank you all for your continued support.  Once I have the book set to publish, I will resume normal blog posts and the next herb book will be about peppermint and spearmint.  They are both growing really well outside my front door for the second year in a row and I'm quite pleased with it! 

Also, I am writing a book on runes as well as planning to release a poetry book.  I have been writing poetry for 30 years.  I know that not everyone likes poetry and I think even less like mine but poetry is an art and that is my form of artistic expression.  When I was in school, my creative writing teacher told me it wasn't poetry unless there was a twist at the end.  I disagree.  He was speaking about Shakespearean poetry.  I am not him, I am me.  I am quite excited to see how my person art is received by the community.  Once I get over this hurdle of learning the formatting they need, I expect this to be a great experience that will expand my horizons farther than I can imagine!

Chifiriuc, Grumezescu, Grumezescu, Saviuc, Lazar, and Andronescu (2012) examined the possibility of coating nanoparticles with rosemary essential oil. The problem they are trying to solve is antifungal resistance to pharmaceuticals as the common fungi that people are subjected to are becoming highly resistant. The idea they had is to look at natural antifungals (plants) and see if they can combine them with nanoparticles and circumvent this.  The two strains they looked at were Candida albicans and Candida tropicalis. 

The plates that had been treated with this combination had practically zero evidence to the protective film that both strains of fungi use to protect themselves from fungicide. This is both the 48 hour plates and the 72 hour plates. 

C. albicans had little effect on the 24 hour plates but the 48 hour had a 85% reduction and the 72 hour plate had a 98% reduction. They did not provide these numbers for C. tropicalis but they said the significant decrease for it was at the 24 hour mark.
 
Have a Great Day!
 
Chifiriuc, C., Grumezescu, V., Grumezescu, A. M., Saviuc, C., Lazar, V., and Andronescu, E. (2012). Hybrid magnetite nanoparticles/Rosmarinus officinalis essential oil nanobiosystem with antibiofilm activity. Nanoscale Research Letters, 2012(7):209.