WHEN IS A FLOWER MORE THAN JUST A FLOWER??

A flower is more than a flower when it turns out to be a herb that can be eaten ,and is also used for many medicable purposes. Please read till the end for a real good laugh.

The other day when I was watering the plants around the back of the house ,I noticed a flower that I had never seen in our yard before ,and for sure not one that I remembered ever planting .I called for the expert and ask Ciejay what it was and she said" oh thats white ginger or the torch flower"I said "ok" where did it come from , and she told me that last year her sister Pia had given her a piece of the ginger root while they were preparing a meal at her house , she wraped it in a napkin and put it in her purse and when she got home she took it out back and stuck it in the ground under the lime (Thai's call them lemon ) tree and forgot about it till I called her to come look. As you can see it is a beautiful flower and it gets prettier every day. I love it .Soooo I thought I would read up a little on it and do a post about it. This will by no means be a thesis on the subject, but just a good read that I hope you will enjoy and maybe learn a little something about Ginger that you did not know ,just like I did .

Ginger is a herb,a tropical plant ,used in Asian medicine to treat stomach aches,nausea, and diarrhea( needed a lot for us expats our first few months in the LOS and spicy foods.)Ginger, is used to alleviate postsurgery nausea, as well as nausea caused by motion,chemotheropy, and pregnancy.Ginger is also used for rheumatoird arthritis, and joint and muscle pain.Ginger is also used in cooking and baking, a lot of the Thai dishes that we call our favorites ,ginger is a must . Mike you said one of your favs was green curry , lots of ginger to make it just right.I also read that they use it to make lots of different candies and also ice cream, and I have even drink ginger beer. have you ever ?

You can purchase it in many forms, they include,fresh (which almost all Thai dishes call for fresh ginger and most of our cooks will have a little bowl of pickled pink ginger to compliment our meal.),or dried root,tablets,capsules,liquid extracts and one of my favorites ginger tea.

I loved this statement from Epircentre Encyclopedia of Spices.Occasionally, your ginger plant may produce ,yellowish green,with purple lips yellow flowers, altho RARELY SEEN.I love this place Ciejay and me call home, and our little piece of paradise, Just this year to have seen the Queen of the desert flower that only blooms very late at night and early in the morning and to top it all off , it only blooms for one day or should I say night . I have showed lots of folks the pictures we took that night and none of them had ever seen them bloom. the pictures are in one of my first post and if you like you can go back and take a look , just maybe you will see a flower you too have never seen. And now to have this beautiful White Ginger or Torch Flower growing in our own back yard , Ciejay can see it out her kitchen window and when I am drinking my morning coffee on our patio out back I can sit and admire it till my hearts content. I asked all my neighbos if they had seen this one kind of ginger flower and only one had seen one at her aunts home in Chang Rai. Maybe they grow everywhere and I have just not seen them, to me they look like a orchid . Have you seen one of these flowers and do you have one in your yard ?, my neighbor said next year there will be lots of plants to dig up for the roots to eat fresh , but probably no flowers, well at least for a time in my life , I got to see one and enjoy it for a season.

NOW FOR A GOOD LAUGH. A use for Ginger that I had never heard of till now and I thought very interesting and funny (Not for the horse) is because ginger is a minor chemical irritant, and because of this it was used as a horse suppository by pre- WW l mounted regiments for FEAGUING: to make a lazy and slow moving horse get up and go.

FIGGING : to treat a horse in such a way as to make the animal appear lively, and to carry his tail well and high, as by putting a piece of ginger into the anus.-- Taken from The Imperial Dictionary of The English Language 1883

All the diffenitions and statements and puns, were by me ,or found on the WWW or in a dictionary, and I by no means would advocate abuse to any animal , I just thought it was funny that they did it back then , and they still allow it in many shows today,because I read that they still do it in many horse shows all over the world ,when a part of the judging is as to how tall the horse carries his tail, and some still do it to make a older horse act younger , I GUESS SO .

Malcolm