Heather Elkins Holistics

It all started in my childhood on a dirt road...

As a little girl in the summertime, my respite was to travel from Florida to my Great Aunt Marie & Uncle John’s working chicken farm in North Carolina. The farm was a little piece of heaven for me and I can still see, smell and hear it. I remember the fresh tomato sandwiches on white bread, the cream filled oatmeal pies and the oh so delicious sweet tea. I still hear the sound of the upright piano that I played as I would spend hours alone with my thoughts and the keys. I even giggle now as I think of how obvious my little finger marks must have been in the Ponds Cold Cream Cleanser that I would sneak a try of in the bathroom medicine cabinet.

In the summer heat, I would spend my days wandering the dusty dirt road in front of the little white house with black shutters, rarely visiting the chicken houses. As I listened to the orchestra of chicken clucks down in the chicken houses, I would pick tiny fragrant wildflowers and collect small yet interesting pebbles and bring them all back to the house.

Somehow, Aunt Marie intuitively knew that my creativity and uniqueness needed to be fostered. She would give me miniature Jack Daniels bottles (the ones that you see on airplanes) and I would soak off the labels and begin to assemble my concoctions. Using tweezers, I would start with gently and delicately placing the pebbles in the base of the tiny bottles via the slender neck. Then, I would drop in the delicate flowers upright on top of the pebbles so as to mimic how I saw them in nature, standing at attention and curious as to what was passing along the dirt road. Lastly, I would top off my personal art pieces with some freezing cold tap water and screw on the miniature lids. I would place them all in the kitchen window above the sink where the sunshine rays would dance on the glimmering bottles.

With each creation that I mastered, I remember wishing that I could capture the energy and the awe of how the flowers made me feel. As I gazed at these little gems, I experienced pure joy knowing that somehow, nature heals. I was too young then to grasp this concept yet I just knew that what I was doing was special.

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