Conservatories
Bring the outside in
We Britons love our gardens – trouble is, we can’t always rely on the weather. Fortunately, there is a solution: simply put a roof on it. In fact, extending your home into...
Gardening
Chelsea Flower Show Guide
It’s going to be a very special show this year: the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, or ‘Chelsea’, as gardeners tend to call it, is celebrating its centenary, with RHS vice...
Globe Trotter
Discover Durham
Writer Bill Bryson described Durham Cathedral as ‘the best cathedral on planet Earth’, and it certainly is a very handsome building indeed. In fact, it sits in a Unesco...
HOME REMEDY: Valerian
By Sof McVeigh
Since planting valerian in my medicinal garden in March, I now see it everywhere in the lanes in Devon – and, as it likes damp ground, it's been loving this summer.
It is a tall plant, with reddish pink flowers that come out in late spring and last through till late July. But it's not these pretty flowers that concern us here, it's the 'home remedy' benefit of its root. Valerian root is a calmative – you'll see it in herbal sleeping remedies. It also helps with a large range of nervous problems, headaches, distress and can also soothe intestinal colic – and it was used in the First World War for shell shock.
Strangely, the smell of the root also attracts cats and rats, which I noticed first hand, as out of all the new plants in my garden this was the only one that something was trying to dig at to get to the roots. Hopefully the neighbour's cat rather than a pesky rat!
You can dry the valerian root and crush a teaspoon of it, leaving it to soak in cold water for 24 hours and then drink it. But please don't use this in large doses, or for long periods of time.
Sof McVeigh: www.thehomemadecompany.com
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Daily tip from the lady archive
"BE careful with your mouth make-up. By careless work you may obliterate well-cut lines, and you will always achieve a badly groomed look if your lipstick is smudged and badly applied."
The Lady, Make-Up for Mouths, 8th January, 1942
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