Albert's Burn Treatment Unit

If you attended our nuptials several years ago, you are likely aware of Ian's nasty habit of accidentally burning himself.  On the morning of our wedding ceremony, he made a big home style breakfast using our cast iron frying pan - a great idea until he grabbed the handle of the very heavy, searing hot pan without an oven mitt (blame it on pre-wedding jitters) and scorched his right hand quite badly.  It made for a painful day of hand shaking - if you got a hug instead, now you know why!  Just kidding.

This weekend we were taking homemade pizza out of the oven and Ian (true to form) burned himself in the process.  Luckily this time it wasn't anywhere near as bad as before our wedding and as Ian was running his finger under cold water, I thought back to Brian and Sarah's visit to the farm a few weeks ago.  A year or so ago, we had gifted them with a baby Aloe Vera plant from our very prolific Aloe plant, Albert, who lives in our living room.  Albert was a gift to us from my Grandma from the annual plant sale at her seniors' center.  Albert is huge (the biggest domestic Aloe Vera plant I have ever seen!) and like I mentioned - a very prolific reproducer.  You can see all his babies stuffed into his pot and in all the little pots around him.

Albert and his babies.

During Brian's visit, he mentioned that he uses his Albert offspring (I'm not sure they've given him a proper name) as a burn treatment - a great naturopathic remedy.  So, to deal with Ian's most recent burn mishap I decided to give old Albert a try and see if he was really any good at relieving Ian's pain.  We sliced a leaf off one of Albert's many babies, cut it into a strip and secured the oozing pad of plant leaf to Ian's finger with lots of tape.

Sure enough, the Aloe Vera juices got right to work soothing Ian's burn.  A big thanks to Albert and family for sacrificing a leaf to heal Ian's finger - it blistered but at least the pain is gone!