The Aspirin Tree

Posted on April 2, 2021 by Art for Housewives
Weeping Willow, Villa Ada

Not far from our house is Villa Ada, the largest park in Rome second only to Villa Pamphili. Located in the north-eastern part of Rome, it has a surface of 180 hectares/450 acres and is covered with vegetation native to the area. Twenty percent of the park is covered with many different kinds of trees such as umbrella pine, oak, laurel, elm, maple and poplar. There’s even a lovely Weeping Willow. And this willow does more than just weep.

For more than 3500 years, willow bark has been used as a traditional medicine. Within the willow bark is salicin, the same salicin that’s used for making aspirin.

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Related: Villa Ada Bunker for Savoia family + How to Make Aspirin From Willow + The aspirin story, from willow to wonder drug

Posted in Ecofeminism, Health & Healing, Plants & Gardening, Roman Diary | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Spring

Posted on March 26, 2021 by Art for Housewives
mint & variegated lettuce

from my balcony container garden…

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Bonsai & Broom

Posted on March 17, 2021 by Art for Housewives
yellow

I live in a condominium that’s wrapped around a meticulously kept central courtyard. To leave the complex, I must pass in front of a ledge holding a neat row of cacti and bonsai. Very Zen. But right below the plants is a yellow broom leaning up against the wall, bristles up. When I first noticed it, I assumed that the concierge had simply forgotten to put the broom in its place. But, subsequentialy, every day when I left the building, the scene was always the same. Now, after years of leaving here, I’m so accustomed to the broom under the ledge that I would miss it if it were to vanish. Because now, for me, it’s like a painting hanging on the wall.

Aesthetics is a form of perception.

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Related: 100 Zen Stories

“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” Ansel Adams

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Bathroom Still-Life

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Art for Housewives

Soap from Aleppo

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Volver and Olivia Laing

Posted on March 10, 2021 by Art for Housewives
Volver the Cat

Our cat, Volver, is an intellectual. He likes to use books as pillows. It helps him absorb information he knows nothing about. Here he is enjoying the Italian translation of Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone.

Related: How art helped me see the beauty in loneliness

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