When the autumn starts colouring our hills and mountains with its temperas, it is time for picking up rose berries and rose hips. So, we also went picking up the rose berries at Herzegovinian hills and mountains these last few days, while the autumn was still fighting with its last atoms of strength of sunny days to prevent the winter coldness to take up all the scenery. This is the story about Ardia rose hip!
However, before we start talking about it, we would like to share with you few thoughts of ours.
Walking and looking for bushes of this inexhaustible source of health, we have come to the following conclusion:
Tradition has it that the God created the World in seven days. In the first six days, He was working and creating and on the seventh day He was taking rest. Walking through our sceneries and getting to know them, we have concluded that also the eighth day must have existed. You know that feeling when, for example, you build the house and you have done all the works, you have done the necessary things, put the furniture, sanitary appliances etc., and then when everything has been done, you decide to „award yourself“ with some work of art on the wall, plant on the balcony or porch, etc. That feeling when you want some cake, or sweets after an abundant meal, even though you are full up, just to please yourself.
So, we think that the Maker took rests on the seventh day and came on that day following the rest. Being satisfied with what had been done in those six days, and with batteries being filled, he must have said: „Well, I am going to make something what will make me very happy“, or as we in Herzegovina would say „at my own wish“.
This region of ours is so beautiful that it is difficult to believe that it was made just like that, one might say, as being obliged. While drawing the lines of this region of ours and making it, that Somebody was especially inspired and He must have especially enjoyed while making it, so to say He must have been resting while creating it. This region is so beautiful that a man even forgets for a while that he is a man, he forgets his life hardships and everyday life and he starts drawing deep breaths and unite himself with nature.
This is how we felt while we were walking along Herzegovinian hills and mountains above Čitluk, Mostar and Stolac, far away from urban world, noise of traffic, where the only sound was the clinking of thorn-bush circles in the wind. This is how we felt while we were getting down to the Neretva’s cuttings in the Upper Neretva above Glavatičevo, where the forest was still showing spite to the autumn with its greenness and where we were drinking Neretva directly from its banks, while stepping along with our footsteps, along which only the experienced anglers walk who find their safe harbour in it.
Ardia’s rose hip comes from all those regions. However, its real name is not rose hip, but the fruit of wild rose or dog rose, and you can also often find in the books this name for it: dog-rose berry. For us it is the rose hip because this is how it was called by our grandmothers and how it is called by our mothers, and the dog-rose berry is pomegranate for us :-).
Why dog rose or „rosa canina“ in Latin?
Because the curative properties of this plant were recognized in ancient Rome. Its roots were used for medical treatment of hydrophobia after the dog’s bite. Our ancestors were using the fruit of wild rose for years for treatment of flu, cold, and fiber at children because it contains multiply larger volumes of vitamin C than, for example, any kind of citrus fruits.
We in “Ardia” use the fruit of rosehip to the largest extent for making the cold pressed oil, which is one of the ingredients in some of our creams. Oil, being rich with vitamins, antioxidants, oleic and linoleic acid, carotenoids, etc., is the best natural instrument for skin moisturizing and it has astringent effects and as such it has an excellent effect against wrinkles and all skin problems. We used the rest of the fruit for preparing the mixture for tea according to the recipes of our grandmothers. Namely, it has been scientifically proved that with all possible vitamin features the rosehip tea had the thorough purifying effect for the body, particularly at problems with the urinary tract and kidneys.
The ancient tradition says that a thorn pricked the wife of Zeus, Hera, while she was picking flowers of wild roses. A drop of blood fell to the unpicked flower and later on – it coloured all the fruits of the rosehip. For this reason, the fruit of wild rose was the symbol of fruitful blood in ancient time.
We admit that a few thorns used to prick us as well, but anyhow every fruit was manually picked, the seeds were manually removed and in the end manually processed as well. To tell the truth, it requires a lot of efforts and work, but it is worth it because the subsequent result is the pleasure of our buyers who choose Ardia products.
We enjoyed the beautiful untouched scenery while we were picking rosehip. This beauty of scenery cannot be described in words so we shared it with you in several photographs in our album at the page, describing it better than any word. Go to the nature as soon as the opportunity knocks. Even if it does not knock, find it, make it up, get to know the beauty of our region and, of course, respect its cleanliness.
When you respect nature, then it returns you a hundred-fold. This is exactly why we in Ardia insist exclusively on pure natural and organically obtained ingredients such as our rosehip, picked far from urban areas, in clean and untouched nature. Every product of ours is just a packed mother’s kiss of that nature that you can bring home with you.
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