"Leaves of Three, Let it Be!"

Those of you on Facebook may already be clued in to my grandmothers weekly gardening blog, Weeds and Wisdom. She wrote a great piece last week on her crafty strategy for deterring hunters from trespassing on their land in northwestern Connecticut: beware the Taraxacum!! Her column this week is about Poison Ivy: "a plant no one can love." Aptly put, Hatter!

When I was a small girl, I was immune to poison ivy. I could touch it and play in it and it hadn't an effect. In fact, there may even be a family story about a certain someone hiding from her grandmother in a patch of poison ivy, refusing to emerge, and knowing that no one would dare retrieve her. However, karma eventually came around and gave this bratty girl a kick in the booty a few years later. What were we doing in the days leading up to our Miss Porter's graduation that I contracted such a dreadful case of poison ivy? Whatever it was, it was most likely naughty, and so my bout of poison ivy in the first week of travel through Italy was undoubtedly well deserved.

Our bodies have exceptional immunities that protect us against bacteria and sickness and disease. Some of our immunities are innate, and some are adaptive defense measures that we develop over a lifetime.

During the last seven months of travel, our bodies have been working exceptionally hard: treking down endless city sidewalks; scaling hillsides and desert sands; bearing the never-diminishing weight of heavy backpacks; and exploring ancient roman ruins and pyramids in flip flops.

But these are just the physical exertions of our bodies; no mention yet of the real work: fighting germs and diseases. Our bodies will be grateful for the rest, once we return to the land where our ancestors have been for several hundred years, where the bacteria is familiar and easy to combat. Our roots in Europe go back so far in time that our immunities to regional/geographical germs have diluted over the years. Though, they are still stronger than our African health immunities, which are even more distant. And in regards to Asia, my innate immunity might be completely nonexistent. 

But really, I'm not an expert on immunity; I'll leave the nitty gritty to those in the crowd with PhDs.

All I really know about immunities is that I've got a rockin' set, but that they’ve been working pretty hard. They may be the only part of me excited to complete this first journey around the world.

If you would like to join the Weeds and Wisdom digest mailing list, or even ask Hatsy your own gardening questions, send her an email at hatsy@sbcglobal.net.