Happy Summer, Y'all

Greetings from the hills!

We had a week or two of sweltering days when the temperature hit 90°F then last week we had rain and very pleasant days.  Not so this week...come back to me, springtime weather!

Bee Balm

 My favorite lilies are blooming.

Burgundy Day Lily, my favorite

The Carolina Wren family in the fuchsia basket is coming along nicely.  There were eight eggs in all, and it's a tight squeeze in the nest now that the hatchlings are growing.   

Have I mentioned that I LOVE homegrown tomatoes?  My earliest memories of them were when I was 8 years old and stayed at my grandmother's farm for a week.  I watched her milk the Jersey, helped peel fruit from the trees and gather garden produce.   One afternoon she handed me a salt shaker and told me to go into the garden and eat all the tomatoes I wanted.  I obeyed to the fullest extent my stomach could handle.  I've never been the same since that day.   They do taste better outside.

After tomatoes I think cantaloupes are a close runner up.  It will be a few weeks on those.

The hydrangeas are beginning to fade, now, after blooming for a full month, but they're still beautiful.  I highly recommend them for your garden.  They can easily be started with a cutting from a friend or bought from nurseries, of course.

Some time ago I was in a medical office for a routine visit when a health professional asked me a question:  "Your not taking any drugs for osteoporosis, are you? "   (Whaaaa?? was blasting my brain,  I'm not old enough....but I managed to recover before I actually spoke. :)  They continued,  "I was asking because they cause more harm than good and don't help with osteoporosis." 

Now, this was a doctor, a real doctor (that doesn't take bribes (perks) in exchange for prescribing drugs to patients) telling me that legally prescribed drugs for osteoporosis do the patient more harm than good. 

Happily, the Be Your Own Doctor II book offers four pages of things we can do to prevent osteoporosis.  I recommend both books in the series as they are invaluable to me, and I've said before, I have no affiliation with them.

Hope y'all are enjoying the beginnings of summer.
Stay cool!


Shared at Saturday's Critters

Surrounded by Birds

Hello, again, from the hills!

Thank you to all who left a comment to let me know I was missed over the past year, and that there is interest in hearing our experience with modern healthcare. We'll get to that in a minute.
Our hydrangeas have been glorious this year due to the abundance of rain we've had.

Last time I told you about the feisty Carolina Wren that built her nest in the fuchsia basket hanging under the back deck.  Here is the best photo I could get of her...on the first deck step.  She's a flighty little thing so it's not easy to get a photo of any kind.  Click here if you'd like to see a video of one from my favorite bird site.

We discovered another Carolina Wren nest in the wreath on the front porch.  She has relatives out front now!  I was tempted to tear the nest out, but instead decided I'd just throw away the wreath when all the babies fly away.

On the right side of this photo you can see eggs in the deep-set nest.

Now, before you read the rest of this post, I encourage you to click here to read an excellent/personal story blog post about the food supply in our country and what they do about it.  I'll be waiting...

Hydrangea

I want to make it clearly understood that a good doctor in my opinion is a gift from the Lord.  I'd simply like to share bits of my experiences in hopes that it will inspire others to take their healthcare so seriously that they lay blind trust aside and begin to ask more questions of their doctors and themselves.  One excellent question might be:  Who will benefit the most from what we term as conventional medicine?  The patient or health professional?

Several years ago I worked in a medical office so I witnessed firsthand the buying, selling and selling out of the profession through the drug companies' reps, who dangled high dollar perks in front of doctors' noses in exchange for prescribing their (sometimes untested) drugs to patients.  Yes, that's exactly how that works.  Let that sink in for a moment.  Goodman, who is diabetic was once prescribed the Byetta pen to help control his blood sugar.

Source

After he used it, he became excessively agitated and very irritable.  He gave it a couple of weeks to get used to it, but he never did so he asked for something else and was prescribed a drug that has since been the subject of several court cases.  He asked for something different, again...  He finally was given a drug he could tolerate and still uses in a low dosage.  (These days he watches his food intake much closer and hopes to reverse the diabetes completely.  That is possible through a diet of vegetables and fruit. )  Back to the Byetta pen....  Several years after he tried it we found out it had not been tested at the time he used it.

The group of doctors that I worked for were very nice, well-respected folks.  However, they scheduled patients in five/ten minute time slots (at the time totaling upwards of $500/hr.) often resulting in the patients feeling as though they'd been left holding their bag as a fast moving train whizzed by them. Imagine how they felt when charged a hefty fare for the ride they felt they never really took.  I was told more than once by patients that they didn't have enough time with the doctor and were overcharged, too, but at least they got a prescription...

Whew!  That was heavy on the writer and the reader, too, I'm sure.  The one thing I want to leave you with is we must be careful what we eat because a good diet will serve our bodies well, but a bad one will definitely cause real health problems.

 Have a lovely rest o' the week, y'all!
I'll be waiting around for these heirloom beefsteak tomatoes to ripen...