nouvelle

i grow a patch of stinging nettles in my back yard for medicinal use. if you run your skin over thier leaves and stalks they will sting you. at first the sting is a bit painfull like little needles in your skin. then small red circular welts form on your skin in clusters where you were stung. after a while they fade and you have a cool tingley feeling followed by a little numbness that feels almost like when your hands fall asleep. this subsides and then any joint or muscle pain you had before is gone. i call this natures accupunture, i believe the stinging has a healing property due to the increased blood flow. yesterday i decided to take advantage of the one sunny day of the week and set out to trim up the yard. i started with the nettles and trimed 27 stalks ranging from one to four feet each. quite a harvest! it took over an hour to trim it all and string it up for drying. during this time i never wore gloves working with my bare hands and arms. it stung very much but i enjoyed the endorphines i got from the pain and i saw it as a sort of super therapy for my hands. it has now been over twenty four hours since i finished with the nettles and my hands are still tingeling and electric feeling. it's starting to wierd me out a little bit. i hope i did'nt achive total assimilation with the nettles.