Mama's Home Remedies: Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Living (36 page)

Autumn swept the fields and meadows and left them standing in a burnt sienna, waiting for winter. She gathered sweet-scented bales of hay in the meadows and stacked them like the towers of an ancient castle. Fall took good care of the Herculean oak standing alone on the hill for more than 200 years. She dressed the giant tree in copper-forged armor, and he looked like a king’s knight.

Andrew, one of the seventh graders, walked together with his classmates in the forest, and they came across the oak. The tree allowed a light breeze to ruffle slowly the smaller branches along its strong arms.

“Oak branches are so strong,” Andrew thought. “I can make a good stick from one.” He bent one of the branches and a crackle sounded so sorrowfully that the astonished boy stopped. Immediately another boy’s voice rang out,

“All come here! Look at this daredevil!” Boys and girls came running to the outcry of the red-headed boy. They cried with indignation, “Did you plant this tree? Who gave you the right to hurt our favorite oak?”

Andrew realized that his schoolmates were not joking with him and that they were not going to forgive him the damage he had done to the tree. He began to run to save himself from being beaten by the children, but the children caught him and under their tough escort he was taken to a house. Their knock on the door brought outside a tall, gray-haired man dressed in a business suit. It appeared as if he was dressed for an important meeting. His jacket was adorned with many medals honoring his achievements in World War II. When the boy saw them, he became ashamed of what he did. He began to mumble, trying to justify himself, “I just wanted to make a stick for our game
gorodky
or I thought I could make a tool to shoot the crows.”

“Don’t listen to him, Uncle Basil!” the boys

and girls said. “He is a real forest’s hooligan.”

Uncle Basil turned to Andrew and asked

in a quiet voice, “Well, what do you think,

boy? Are you a hooligan? I cannot believe that

you could be so cruel to a tree, especially our

oak.” He continued, “Unfortunately I don’t

have time now to discuss this, but please come

tomorrow to our club.”

He addressed the other students, “You,

boys and girls, come on time. Don’t be late.”

250 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

“Uncle Basil, we’ll go with you to the village hall,” said the students and they did. It looked as if they had forgotten all about Andrew. He trailed them slowly. They stopped near the village hall where Uncle Basil was. Andrew looked around while the group made final plans to meet tomorrow at the club. Near the road, not far away he noticed two rowan trees, trampled down. These young trees, glistening with red berries, were broken in half. Andrew realized that they would not grow anymore—they would not produce oxygen or delight people’s eyes.

Andrew approached Uncle Basil and silently showed him what had happened to the rowan trees. Uncle Basil shrugged his shoulders and said sadly,

“During World War II when our Army passed through the territory of fascist Germany, we didn’t crush with our tanks and military cars any of the trees and other foliage. We passed near them, but we did everything possible to keep them safe from harm. In spite of that, it was Germany and Hitler, the land of our enemies. But now, in peaceful times, we have here some people who don’t want to preserve Nature in their Motherland.”

Andrew dropped his eyes and said, “I will plant two or three new rowan trees. Please let me make it up to you and correct my mistake with the oak.”

The red-headed boy, who first caught Andrew near the oak, said, “You will plant. Sure, you will plant. But we will not accept you as a member of our club, ‘Good Friends of the Forest.’ I don’t think so.”

Andrew was shocked. Al he wanted most now was to become a member of their friendly green team. So Andrew said goodbye and went home. The next day he went to the park after school. He became more and more interested in Nature. Suddenly in a beautiful meadow in the park he saw a smal , agile girl. She was standing near a goat, which was nibbling fresh grass. Andrew began to cry loudly with indignation, “Ah, you, the hooligan! What are you doing?”

He rushed up to the girl and said, “Immediately go out and find another, more appropriate place for your goat!” The girl didn’t expect anybody to see what she was allowing her goat to do and so she became frightened. She pulled the goat’s horns, but the stubborn animal refused to stop and continued to nibble the grass on the park’s lawn.

Then Andrew lost his patience. He came up behind the goat and clapped his hands loudly. The goat turned and ran full speed through the park. The girl ran away after her. Andrew followed them, running so fast that he caught them both. He took the goat’s horn, then the girl’s arm and escorted them to Dialogue with the Trees of Strength and Everlasting Life @ 251

the club, “Good Friends of the Forest.” So Andrew became a faithful guard of green verdure. Members of the club accepted him and recognized that he did very well with the goat and the girl.

He asked Uncle Basil why the boys became so angry with him in the forest near the oak. Even then he was thinking that no harm would be done if you break just one branch of an old big oak because the tree is strong and can survive some damage. The boys and girls heard his questions to Uncle Basil. One of them said passionately, “You know what? You know nothing; you are a fool if you think that. This oak that you hurt is a famous, historical tree.”

Uncle Basil asked Andrew, “Do you not know what this oak is all about?”

Andrew had no idea. “OK,” said Uncle Basil. “We’ll explore the oak’s history in the forest.” And they went to the hill where the ancient oak was standing as a guard and a wonderful monument to Mother Nature. Over the years it had become an inseparable part of the village’s history. It stands today because in their turn the village people carefully guarded their most famous inhabitant. Over the years many storms swept over the oak, but it remained standing. The old oak was named Suvorovsky oak because long ago it was planted by the great Russian general, Alexander Suvorov.

Many years ago, during the Russian-Turkish war, Suvorov’s troops crushed the Turkish army and were returning to Russia through Moldova (in the eighteenth century Moldova was cal ed Bessarabia). Before they began to ferry across the big river Dniester in Moldova, they stopped for a picnic. For several months Suvorov’s soldiers rested on the hil . They were exhausted after many long battles with the Turks. However they returned home victoriously and deserved to have a good vacation. General Suvorov had a good time here also. His camp was built near the vil age in the lovely, sunny val ey. He and his soldiers enjoyed the warm sun, the tepid waters of the river, tasty fruits and vegetables, the fresh air of the forest, the beautiful vil age women, and the hospitality of its people. Some of them married local girls and remained in the vil age. Suvorov was so impressed with the people’s hospitality and appreciation that when it was time to leave, he decided to do something significant for them to remember that the Russian troops saved this small country from Turkish invaders. He was a generous, kind man and planted the oak on the hill where his army had rested.

“Grow big here, young oak tree,” he said, “and let the people remember us, the soldiers that defeated the invaders and brought such desirable freedom 252 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

and peace to all living in this small, wonderful

country.”

Then he took a bucket of water from the

Dniester river and poured it on the ground

where he planted his tree. After that Suvorov

mounted a white horse with a golden saddle

and signaled to his soldiers to ferry across the

river. Old and young people and children from

the vil age gathered on the riverbanks to say

goodbye, and they watched the troops disappear

from their view. Now, in this wonderful val ey,

where more than two centuries ago Suvorov’s

army found a hospitable place to rest, wheat and

corn fields stand in golden bloom.

Andrew looked at the amazing Herculean oak. Each of its leaves was like a masterpiece of Nature. Each looked like a delicate, expansive jewel in gold and bronze, and suddenly he understood that only Nature is capable of creating this special art, and this art is inaccessible to us, people. Let us listen to her tender music and then we will understand the eternal language of the forest—of the trees. We’ll hear the delicate sound of trembling leaves and the songs of happy birds. We’ll see with new eyes the rich colors of fading leaves in autumn, crystal trees in the winter snow, talkative pine groves, and flowers in the spring in this mysterious silence under the oak’s shadow. The tree’s branches were slightly moving under a light breeze. The powerful oak was standing as a soldier, ready to thwart any attack from a newcomer with bad intentions. The clean fragrance of warm leaves hung in the air. The leaves had been rustling in the light wind. It seemed to me that they tried eagerly to tell everyone how wonderful the forest was in all four seasons of the year; and about Suvorov’s oak, Hercules, and about his remarkable friends, loving passionately this amazing treasure of the earth and carefully guarding her fabulous green attire.

When I was leaving, at the end of the village on the shore of the Dniester river, three tall poplars peacefully murmured a good-bye and stood quietly in their miraculous splendor. It seemed that they stepped out of an ancient myth about Phaeton, the son of Phoebus, god of the sun, and Clymene, a nymph. He asked his father to do an impossible thing: to appear in the sky instead of Dialogue with the Trees of Strength and Everlasting Life @ 253

the god of the sun. He was allowed to drive his chariot across the sky, but it was too much for the young man. He lost direction in the sky and couldn’t control the powerful winged horses that pulled the chariot. Everything was on fire in the sky and on the earth and could be destroyed.

Then the god Zeus threw the sparkling lightning with his thunderbolt and extinguished the fire—but not before the fire had killed the young man. Phaeton fled into the air with the curls on his head still burning, and like a falling star he tumbled in flames from the sun’s chariot into the waves of the river Eridanos (Eridanus, now the river Po), far away from his motherland. There water nymphs buried him on the banks of the river.

Deeply mourning, Phaeton’s father, the god of the sun, covered his face with a black shawl and did not appear in the blue sky all day. His mother, Clymene, and his three sisters, the Heliades, sat near his grave and wept on the riverbank. They remained weeping and murmuring until their feet took root in the earth. Great gods turned the crying Heliades into poplar trees. These three poplar trees remain kneeling above the river, with their tears falling into clear water. They never stop throwing their tears into the river, where they solidify. In the sunlight their tears of sap have a golden color and turn into transparent, yellow amber.

When Pliny wrote his
Natural History
, he doubted the story of the poplar, which was told also by Ovid in his poetic metamorphoses. Maybe he was right because the most popular version is that amber was made 50 mil ions years ago from the resinous matters of only one variety of pine tree,
Pinus succinfera
. It grew from the early Eocene period until today in the northern part of Europe, the area covered by the Baltic Sea, which includes Scandinavian countries and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland. Would you like to determine what tree corresponds to your birth date?

Use this calendar from the book
The Celtic Tree Calendar,
Your Tree Sign and
You
by Swiss writer Michael Vescolli. This book was published in English translation in 1999 by British publisher Souvenir Press, Ltd., and Rosemary Dear (English translation). I would like to thank Souvenir Press, Ltd. for permission to reprint information from their book. 254 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

Your Tree Sign

From
The Celtic Tree Calendar Your Tree Sign and You

by Swiss writer Michael Vescolli

Oak

Olive

21 Mar

23 Sept

22 – 31 Mar

Hazel

24 Sept – 3 Oct

1 –10 April

Rowan

4 – 13 Oct

11 – 20 April

Maple

14 – 23 Oct

21 – 30 April

Walnut

24 Oct – 11 Nov

1 – 14 May

Poplar

15 – 24 May

Chestnut

12 – 21 Nov

25 May – 3 June

Ash

22 Nov – 1 Dec

4 – 13 June

Hornbeam

2 – 11 Dec

14 – 23 June

Fig

12 – 21 Dec

Birch

Beech

24 June

22 Dec

25 June – 4 July

Apple

23 Dec – 1 Jan

5 – 14 July

Fir

2 – 11 Jan

15 – 25 July

Elm

12 – 24 Jan

26 July – 4 Aug

Cypress

25 Jan – 3 Feb

5 – 13 Aug

Poplar

4 – 8 Feb

14 –23 Aug

Cedar

9 – 18 Feb

24 Aug – 2 Sept

Pine

19 – 29 Feb

3 – 12 Sept

Willow

1 – 10 Mar

13 – 22 Sept

Lime

11 – 20 Mar

Yew

3 – 11 Nov

Dialogue with the Trees of Strength and Everlasting Life @ 255

You can use also the following chart where I name these trees based on my experience and my impression in dealing with these powerful creatures of Mother Nature.

Apple
, the tree of Beauty and Love

December 23–January 1

June 25–July 4

Fir,
the tree of Independent Spirit

January 2–January 11

July 5–July 14