Sunday, May 16, 2010

PUERCORICO'S ENVIRONMENTALISTS DO YOU KNOW YOUR ASS FROM YOUR ELBOWS

IN MEMORIAN
Yuca Manihot

On Thursday of 2010,  this creature propagated from
cut stems, provided by Crispin, our former good friend and
owner of a timbiriche at 331 Tapia St., fell to his death, at
18 months of age.
As you probably know this is the edible kind, if harvested at the right time...However, it
 grew over twenty feet and it was an impressive conversation piece.. The ten feet wide canopy reminded your humble servant of that of Drago trees.  It was dismembered with care and affection, disposed
as needed.  Four of his stems have been replanted.

Ha muerto la yuca.....
Demos gracias a dios. 

AS YOU PROBABLY guess, I have some reluctant followers. 
These readers against their will, hate my guts. Since there is no other blog down in the concrete/asphalt isle covering the court with such grace and wide scope, they bear up. They hate me as a person, but seem to share my views.  It is consequence of having
some character, a matter of personality, I gather.  Good for me.

I am not into the making of friends, I reiterate.  Today I will share this on going experience of the third kind with the usual suspects.
In Puercorico there is a national-cultural handicap to accept defects as a group, individuals, as a nation. It is increased by
the relation with USA, a love/hate, if you get my drift.  Since I am almost perfect in this regard, I practice my vocation. 

I confess showing some irate intolerance to criticism without credentials/criteria.  I accept it when there is no escape, with the little humility our mighty lord provided yours truly.

Recently I met this lady from faraway lands, a neck of a wood, if I may.  She, a bored, boring to death housewife, created a group
with some silly endeavour, better done at home, seriously, with
references and constant research.

Me beef with this bored, hobby practitioners is that jumping in the green ecology/environment/nature Wells Fargo Stage Coach, is easy.  Unfortunately, the  issues are not as simple as they seem at first glance. 

Today I will discuss the importance of a botanical inventory, one
more time, knowing that it will go the other ear, again.

If you collect plants, as I do, you can not depend on nurseries or anyone else but yourself. You have to  RESEARCH, constantly unless you are the bored housewife/student in feisbuk, pretending to do something useful, when what you are doing is useless, except in your own blindfolded eyes.

A botanical inventory is not the GROCERY shopping list, the above housewife prepares in a last minute effort.  It is a document that should be useful to other people.  What people? Those who also collect and need to know the conditions 
under the ground, on top of it to plant certain species.

Those who read, keep tract of the plants, trees, vines, plant, bushes and weeds on his/her residence.  When one in the collection pass away it is erased and substituted.

The monitoring of the garden includes integrated pest management and disease.  One does not just dig the hole and plant anything, letting it hang there at its luck.

One does not start a collection to have a number of plants that others will not be able to reach.  It is not a matter of NUMBERS.
It is aesthetics, shape, forms, size, texture, resistance to disease, drought, heat, shade/sun/humidity on one hand. On the other,
root/canopy spread after certain amount of years.

A collection in the URBAN CONTEXT, does have limitations like
pollution, vandalism, asphalt/concrete heat, salty breezes, micro climates,  that our hick housewife and partners will never encounter.

To finish with a smile of the last laugh.  Can you identify your plants after you have find their botanical names?  I can not. You
will forget half the names all the time. I have to check the list constantly to stay on top.  The other solution is to go to the web
with the name+pictures.

So dear housewife, get to work...One day you will have a million
species if you want...Taking care of them is the trick.  Having a healthy garden/collection, not with the ego on the line, but biodiversity...After all we ALL pass away sometime...That is that.

I

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