I agree, Suzy,
You are feeling bad.
But, anyone who can write your above post has their head on straight!!!
You can SEE what you are doing!
:D
...1. Put your arms around yourself and give yourself a hug. You are one smart cookie!
...2. Practice making a clear statement about what you will do in the future, and then let it go into the universe, forget about it...and let your subconscious mind do the job for you.
This works! Here is how I know...
I began to have difficulty reading the size of print in the telephone book. At the same time I wasn't trusting my memory of frequently-called numbers.
Because I was living in a new-to-me community, I had difficulty remembering her number every time I called Beth.
After looking up her number one day, I made a statement to myself, out loud...
"...I will remember every number I need to remember, when I need to remember it."
Then I made the call, and promptly forgot my statement.
I may have repeated the statement, once, later that day.
A day or two later, I was reaching for the telephone, and, as my hand was over the receiver, the number I wanted popped into my head...automatically.
And, the phenomenon repeated itself, every time I went to call a familiar number. It has never stopped in twenty-four years...though I have allowed the talent to become rusty, at times. I can always refresh it by making another statement.
...3. You have already sensitized yourself to dire warnings about health 'issues'...for a very good reason. You want excellent health for your family.
Your 'noticer' is working very well, indeed!
So, switch it!
Notice, instead, all the best things for well-being. They are all around you.
Go up in an airplane. You'll see that the raw land surrounding your town or city, and farming areas, is far bigger than the area of population and farming.
And, the wilderness area operates entirely on natural law, as it has since the dawn of time.
In fact, none of us would be living without the remaining wilderness. Mankind hasn't 'managed' raw land very well. ...Which is a lucky thing that we haven't afforded the machinery necessary to 'work' it all! ...Though we have cut it up quite a bit, with roads for traveling machines.
Did you know that there are animals, soil micro organisms, and plants that won't/can't cross a road, or railway right-of-way? ...Or, a cultivated plot?
Build a town, and many living things will be found on one side of it but not on the other.
Pour chemicals into the aquafer (the ground water), and/or the air, and the urban run-off will poison or alter the genetics of every living thing in its path, until...until the natural cleaning systems we depend on, unknowingly, purify our errors.
Even our toilets and sinks pollute. We send stuff through our bodies, and it goes down the drain.
If we send it to the ocean, without running it through rocks and plants, first, for purification, it pollutes the ocean...which is a pity because 70% of our oxygen used to come from the green-growing things in the oceans.
I don't know if that is worse than what we do to the soil micro organisms that feed us.
Plow the land and we kill soil micro organisms that carry all nutrients to plant roots. ...Period.
Plants sort and *SELECT* all nutrients, for all creatures up the food chain.
Dead micro organisms, exposed to the elements by plowing, carry no nutrients to plants...or us.
Plants without the full spectrum of mineral nutrients, will convert some of what IS available to other things, so the plant appears to be healthy, but isn't. Plants will do these conversions, if they must, to continue their species...which is why wheat isn't what it used to be...too much man-management.
(In the 1980's we were told that it would take 75 bowls of 1980's spinach to equal the nutrients in 1 bowl of 1930's spinach.)
In the 1930's, when they discovered that food plants no longer contained the nutrients they once had, someone pronounced that the growing-soil was 'depleted', and needed 'additives'...the fewer and cheaper, the better.
Hogwash!
The rock and sand, the source of all nutrients, was still in growing soil. What was missing was the soil micro organisms to help break down and carry the nutrients to food plant roots.
More than that, without weeds and grasses to protect against drying, and to pull up moisture and collected nutrients from far below, crops failed and the land dried up and blew away. In some areas they called the phenomenon a 'dust bowl'.
Plus, although growing soil can renew itself, naturally...renewal takes time...longer than one year...depending on the damage done.
Some farmers were smart and let the land lie 'fallow', whole fields, one, two, or three years completely without 'cropping' of any kind. The soil micro organisms, weeds, and grasses returned from adjoining wild land...and the natural mulch protected all.
Today, we have forgotten the natural way so thoroughly that Wickipedia reports the meaning of 'lying fallow' as the planting of a different crop! ...With not a word of leaving a field to the laws of nature and natural renewal.
Is it a co-incidence that farm machinery had been peddled to most farmers just before the 'dust bowls' happened? And, the debt farmers now had to deal with, just to survive on the land?
You know, I really dislike telling the doom and gloom of 'what went wrong'. I would much rather talk about the good things we can do, starting now.
That's the beauty of this story...'what went wrong' leads directly to 'doing better'...beginning with...
...Grow your own...on heritage land, without plowing, and,
...Protect the soil micro organisms.
TWO complimentary crops can be taken off unplowed growing soil every year, without damaging the soil or diminishing the harvests at all.
A Japanese man proved it. (Google 'no-till'.)
He scattered two kinds of seeds, on untouched heritage land, where one kind of seed grew to harvest, while the other grew more slowly and mulched the soil until the first crop was taken off. Then the second crop grew to harvest...soil micro organisms intact.
Of course, it takes wise choice of seeds...but much less labor! ...No 'watering' needed if the fields were well-chosen!
Pollution, and damage to the soil, is very, very expensive. We can see that in the grocery stores.
Also, left to itself and nature, all soil will produce balance between plant-eating and insect-eating creatures. Each plant will seek its optimal conditions. If a plant is there but can't find its best needs, it will vanish...perhaps to return when other plants die and provide room. Nature is all about 'balance'.
(A tulip bulb was prevented from flowering by vigorous over-hanging shrubs, for fifty years. Trim and reshape the shrub, and there was the tulip, blooming once more. In the bombing of London during WW II, dug up foundations revealed sprouting seeds covered for 50 and 100 years.)
I know this is a lot of 'new' (forgotten) info to wade through, but I'll be repeating it, and anything else that rings a bell with me, for the rest of my life.
I wish I could say these are original thoughts and conclusions (I could be filthy rich), but this information is all over the Internet, in books (particularly old books), and between the ears of wise, wise gardeners the world over. It only needs to be talked about, more. It doesn't get much air-time...with one notable exception...
...On the Discovery channel they have shown the video of a Mr. Nasser, in Brazil, who restored 10 hectares of spoiled land by replanting clumps of weeds and grasses from nearby areas. It took him twelve years.
Then he began growing started food plants, right among the weeds and grasses. He lifted a bit of turf, put in a well-started plant, and pressed the turf back into place. ...Making sure the surrounding weeds and grasses were clipped back low enough as to not shade the food plant. Clippings remained where they fell...more mulch.
I won't tell how many people the video says Mr. Nasser can feed because that is so astonishingly high that it causes cries of disbelief among those who are stuck in 'modern' gardening practices.
His unpruned, unsprayed orange trees get far more production than average in this major citrus-growing part of the world.
Mr. Nasser is/was a Fellow of Ashoka. (Google it for amazing accomplishments all over the world, and how to do them at home.)
And, I saved the best for last...
...250,000,000 years ago, parts of oceans were cut off, and began to dehydrate into deposits of crystalized (rock) mineral salts.
The beauty of these deposits is that all the minerals, life-giving nutrients, were already selected and balanced to give life by ocean plants (fed by micro organisms)...long before man invented pollutants and imbalances.
:D
So, all over the world there are buried deposits of perfect nutrition...waiting for us to dig them up, add enough water, and spread on growing soil...or sprinkle in our baths.
Our skins are the perfect balancers of minerals, in enough water, for our bodies. And, our skins detoxify our insides, too. ...More than the lungs, kidneys, and bowels, combined.
Dishwater and even the moisture in air do the same thing. How fond are you of detergent? ...Or, automobile exhaust...even 'hybrid'?
That's all I can type for today, Suzy.
I know I wasn't asked for this information...but, darn it, no one should feel bad about our world! It is so gloriously beautiful and well-ordered that we have developed into the finest of our species ever to walk the face of this planet.
It all works in cycles, according to natural law.
Did you know there are thousand-year cycles, and likely some much longer?
One fellow saw that elephants eat accacia forests, finally knocking the trees down to get at the leaves in the upper branches. When the forest is exhausted, the elephants move on, in search of more accacia trees. But, in the meanwhile, dung beetles have been rolling elephant poop into their burrows, to feed their young.
Baby dung beetles don't eat the accacia seeds in the elephant poop, thereby planting new accacia trees.
When many new accacia trees grow, back come the elephants.
Elephants even have a Plan B, for use when poachers are about, seeking elephant teeth (ivory).
Male elephants don't usually mate until they are forty. Wildlife observers report that they are now mating when they are thirty, and they are mating with females who are beyond the usual age of fertility...and producing offspring!
There's a large rodent in rainforests which buries caches of Brazil nuts for winter, and often forget where they left them. That ensures the sprouting of new Brazil nut trees which produce even decades later. The lowest branches may be 500 feet in the air...but when the nuts drop they become one of the few crops harvested commercially, from the wild.
Which makes another point...
...Tree and bush foods are best because they AREN'T often plowed...the soil micro organisms remain intact.
Observers of the 'natural' system of growing things are far more likely to survive, and be well.
No need to worry when you have such a good 'thinker', my friend.
My best,
Fledgling