Lavender Natural Remedy
The piercing, exquisite perfume of lavender flowers has a similar reviving effect as smelling salts when inhaled, for it is known that lavender calms the nerves and relaxes tensions. A bath at night impregnated with a few drops of lavender oil soothes and relaxes the peripheral nerves, while lavender flowers in a sedative tea mixture will help to bring on sleep. The leaves, as well as the flowers, have this wondrous effect. When you are stripping a quantity of dried lavender, notice how drowsy you become. Besides this, lavender was recognized as having a good effect on the digestion. Lavender essence has been widely used as a remedy for giddiness and faint-ness, nervous palpitations, and flatulence. It was administered by putting a few drops on sugar or in a little milk. Oil of lavender is still used by modern herbalists to rub into rheumatic joints to ease pain. It is also claimed that rubbing oil of lavender on burns assists with healing scar tissue.
Lavender toilet water seems always to have been available. It is antiseptic for the skin, refreshing, and is especially recommended for an oily complexion and pimples. Fresh or dried lavender flowers or leaves tied in a muslin bag and infused in hot bathwater give the skin an all-over fragrance (use oil of lavender instead if you wish). Who does not respond to the wholesome smell of lavender-perfumed sheets and pillow cases? Lavender-perfumed notepaper and cards were once very much in vogue too. Lavender is indispensable in potpourri mixtures, in lavender-filled clothes hangers, in lavender bags, and for making lavender “bottles.” Because of its soothing qualities, lavender is essential inside “sleep pillows.” The warmth of the head releases the perfume and induces tranquil slumber. Not only the flowers are used, but the leaves as well. Never throw away the foliage: besides being perfumed, it provides valuable bulk when needed.
Lavender also has the benefit of keeping away mice as household pests .Planting Lavender bushes outside the entrances to the home will stop mice from entering . Bunched Lavender can also be dropped under the floor boards ( best if this is done first),and this will drive out the mice from hard to access areas and will ensure that they do not return . This is a very humane way to rid your home of these pests , and has the added benefit os not using poisons that can lead to ill effects with domesticated pets , and there will be no dead mice decaying under the floor boards or in the crawl spaces .
Among the various types of lavender, the most highly perfumed of plants, there are three basic kinds, known individually as English, French, and Italian lavender. There are many hybridized versions, some of them quite hardy and successful, like L. allardii, which is larger than most lavenders and has the long flower spikes and smooth leaves of English lavender, while the foliage has the indented edges of French lavender. There are several strains that have been developed from English lavender. Some are “Hidcote Giant,” dwarf “Hidcote,” and “Munstead.” “Canary Islands’1 lavender (or “fern-leaf” lavender) looks quite different again with gray-green, finely cut foliage which has the same slightly eucalyptus scent as the purple blooms carried at the tips of very long stalks; the mature plant looks like a thick, leafy cushion with graceful stems curving upward from it. Flower colors available in English lavenders are beautiful and varied and may be snow white, dusty pink, shades of blue, and then going through the spectrum of mauves from pale lavender to deepest purple.
