Monday, November 29, 2010

BARCELONA 5 REAL MADRID 0

FOR  a misanthropist, to watch the group spirit and individual creativity demonstrated during this match, demands a few words for the inspiration.

This game is among memorable historical memories.  The first,  murder of John F. Kennedy, the suicide of Salvador Allende, Vietnam's Victory, the demolition of the Berlin wall, fall of the former Soviet Union, the demise of USA as a gone world power  in  banking, industrial, financial and construction segments of the economy.

These are some historical events among others, that I will never forget.

But let the record show that besides winers, the defeated should have shown some, character for the effort.  Not the poor looser attitude from many in the Real Madrid.

Here, in the Caribbean I feel some satisfaction, with the victory of this faraway team.
Barsa and Guardiola, demonstrated  great team spirit with individual creativity. 

In this backwaters all that is a dream. Water and salt. But elsewhere it is still possible, evident.

Viva el Barsa!

A CAT CHRISTENED JUSTICIA

I write these social critique while waiting for that world match event: Barcelona/Real Madrid, in five hours.

Squeaky and Pillsbury boy 

Next door neighbors from hell. A couple with fat pasty pale attributes. Mentally  IQ of .00005, added. 

She speaks, laughs with the high pitch of the witch, along Dorothy and Toto in Wizard of OZ.

I know when they are home thanks to their swearing, five word sentences, hollering, slamming of kitchen door cabinets, rattle of spoons against metal, glass and such..  When stoned, they become bilingual speaking that riff raff English of the illiterate migrant here or there.
A square body, turtle like neck/body. Them breasts attached by the collar bone, similar to cujete fruits,  a manatee with a push up bra.

He wear glasses like Jari. Demoted  from Michelin icon to  Pillsbury boy after he lost thirty pounds jogging. 

However, his habit of pork shops fried in rancid lard between 8/9 PM, will probably move him upwards the ranks.

He has a red junked car in his driveway, bought another white five hundred bucks one later.

He thinks of himself as a musician.
With some really shitty trap drums,
(I know, I am a light percussionist),
no high hat, no tom-toms, just a snare and bass.  When he practices
is as torture, fun, as those folk Apache/Sioux war/rain dances. 

What have I done to deserve all this hindrances of noise, ugly people and surroundings? Is it my croix?
Payment for me sins while alive?

Justicia! Well I almost forgot.  The kitty cat arrived to their unkempt sweet home, when still little and cute. Yellowish with stripes. After approximately 50 five days, Justicia status made an abrupt turn. He became a stray cat with a collar and  bell.

Right after that, they got a dog with a similar stupid name: Chito. The poor undisclosed breed used to salute me as only dogs can with the tail back an forth, happy as hell, every time I went by the north garden, during his first 3 weeks with them feeble minded owners..

Since the sons of beaches do not touch, caress the can creature, he is so depressed now that barely moves. Sleeping most of the day.

Does not bother to say hi to this intercontinental blogger/gardener as he used. He sleeps under the stars in the cold concrete, with a plastic roof that does not stop the windy rain from his sad body.


Justicia and Chito, two suffering animals thanks to the stupidity of the mentally feeble. Ah! Puerto Rico donde su triste muere i se morira de nada..


Apago i me voy.. Esto esta bajo la primera oracion: Flora y Fauna.  En este caso fauna endemica borricua bipeda.


FANS AND FOES

Remember to drop by
Caribbean Botanical Review.
Your average botanical notions
may widen a little.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

BARSA 2 REAL MADRID 1

N o one should be surprised.  This blog broke the mold long time ago, but I will not remain in the surface.

Football, the real one, called soccer by those in USA, is the only sport I watch with my critical condition.  Spain and England are me favorite countries to watch.

Tottenham, Chelsea, Manchester United and other teams from these British isles attract the hell out of me. I reiterate that since me early days the former empire 
created some fascination that remains and I will not/can not explain. It is a variety of climates, vegetation, geography and topography mostly, not necessarily people as many may have gathered.


Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia were always on my mind. They should make me an honorary citizen and send me a passport to spend a week each in those places.


Spain on the other hand made a similar impression but the mentioned interests are less wide.  Canary and Balearic islands mostly, particularly Lanzarote, in part, thanks to Cesar Manrique Cabrera and his unique 
landscape and building designs, besides the ancient agricultural, gardening trends in the Peninsula.


Now to the tittle. After the world cup.  The urge to watch football has kept my interest mostly in Barsa,  but I watch other teams with creativity.  This sport is one of a few in which the talent of the group,
has to be followed by individual creativity and unselfishness to create and attempt to score. 


Leo Messi, Ronaldo Cristiano, Eto, and the whopping crane looking fellow in Tottenham, Crouch are among my favorites. There are others, but I do not want to bore you.  Football is perhaps the only sport that scoring or the attempt are equally beautiful, thanks to the need to be creative.  Leo Messi's movements, often remind one of ballet. The grace and difficulty from such a small and fragile gentleman make every goal a memorable moment.  Rubin Kazan, the strangest name for a football team, don't you think?


Football is played on turf. I HATE turf, but there is no option. As a perfectionist I can tell when the soil is compacted, the grass too long or too short, when is cut by trimmer, dull or unbalanced blades.
When tons of nutrients: phosphate, nitrogen are used to keep it lush, pretty much as in a golf course.  But one should wonder if sport fields could be organic. I know it could be push mowed by many people creating tons of jobs, but would it be practical? Also the compaction issue, could it be aerified without a gas/oil machine?


If the subject interests you, here it goes.
The worst football fields are all in America, Central and South. They look like shit. I have seen one in Mexico, mowed in circles, with a 3 feet lawn mower, ridiculous, absurd and you can  notice the wheel tracks on top of the ugly pattern on the burned, stressed, yellowish turf.

In the past turf was just mowed, now it has to have some unnecessary pattern, created in different ways, that some people like.


It is time to go, Barsa should win. But the essence of turf management is not forgotten. Check this out if you get a chance, and enjoy this game and the others.
CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE OF ATHLETIC FIELDS

EUROPE VS USA

http://archive.lib.msu.edu/tic/mitgc/article/1985165.pdf

Friday, November 26, 2010

AGRICULTURE GARDENING AND MIGRATION

H ere for your enjoyment, a very short piece, from that Norman Rockwell like piece of Americana, Time Magazine from October 2010.  With my editorial comments that probably will touch you
no matter how far, after wards.


TALKING HEADS
Stepeh Colbert
The Comedy Central satirist,
speaking before Congress
about the latest immigration reform
 Americans' farms are presently too dependant on immigrant labor 
to pick our fruits and vegetables...This is America.  I don't want a tomato picked by a Mexican.  I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian". --9/21/10 

Only in USA

I do not know where you are, but I wonder if a comedian or satirist or whatever character making millions on television will have such opportunity. To speak in Congress and be taken seriously.

At any rate. The problem with hordes of migrants, in every land attached continent and isle one, archipelagos included, like us, is the urge from merchants to exploit, a blind need for cheap labor.

That is why I can not understand so much crap about any type of tourism, the beautiful, quiet,  clean sands of ----- ---, fill the blanks. Tourism, construction and agriculture have become the best way to exploit others anywhere by people also in money laundering, tax evasion and always requesting when legally operating, tax breaks.  

In Spain where agriculture is so sophisticated that some kind of peppers, artichockes, asparagus, have strict controls of denomination of origin, like wine in France, for example, are bought cheap to the farmers, but sold for ten times more  in the store.

Then you find cheaper similar  products 'the same' or just as 'good' for one third, of  the superior quality national product.  In the EU, the problem is similar, but also different than USA.

In Europe many of the exploited are citizens from other countries in the community or illegal migrants from the south and east.

In USA, well we know. The problem is simple. People without jobs or making two bucks a day in their original countries looking f0r the 'better future'. 

It is ironic that someone could find the price of produce expensive, whine and complaint and pay two hundred bucks for a play station.

It seems that exploiting others is morally irrelevant.  The Sugar Cane industry is an example, in Guatemala or Haiti, one dollar a day for twelve hours of work under that damn heat, insects, no toilets, nothing, just like slaves. But I never read/hear or see the native isle humanitarians blabbing about Irak, Korea or Pakistan, say a fucking word about this nearby exploited neighbors. Oh, the freedom of expression, that is a big deal here along these freaks, or human rights in Cuba...or else.

I believe that protectionism in agriculture is relevant, screw globalism and those always looking for the cheapest. Protect your agriculture, no one else will.  Who cares?

Why shall people in Spain eat bananas from Ecuador, when they have them in the Canary Islands?

Is either that or going the easy way, always searching for the cheap and the cheapest. Even in China, some industries are moving to Vietnam for the cheapest way to get something.

Who taught us the way? USA, USA, that is why there is not much there.

During the sixties when the Americans started dismantling their factories, moving to Puerto Rico for cheap labor the snow ball started to roll, reaching China.

As long as people continue procreating cheap labor will be abundant, in their own countries or that of the migrants in search of a 'better future'.

If you enjoyed this, 

Caribbean Botanical Review

may be of interest:
Dunes Reforestation in Puerto Rico

That is that.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

INTELLIGENT HOUSES FOR DUMMIES

I just climbed down from our flat garage roof with the aid of a 15 feet high ladder.
This activity is a not for fun or an aerial view of my work in progress, Bouret Horticultural Society, Flora/Fauna Urban Sanctuary, but to sweep the leaf drops from the Tabebuia, planted two feet from our property, in that hated, notoriously expensive, noisy, polluting, institution Universidad Sagrado Corazon.



While observing the USC flat roofs, with over crowded air conditioners holding water run off and rain with  leaves/dust clogged drain pipes, I noticed an endemic marsh/prairie like pond, weeds dominant, certainly picturesque weed prairie is turning their lacking maintenance roof, green.

Not long ago, I read an article about intelligent houses in Puerto Rico. You know, those designed/built by our mock-up architects, to limit pollution,   electricity and water waste, with computers and electrical systems that cost a years salary of one interpreter in New York State. Not to get into the maintenance.

What do these environmentally conscious architects of models, decide to install in the garden of this bright house? Wild guess any juan? Palms, hedges and what else TURF. All this made the post possible.

Minutes later, thinking of fans and foes,  I decide to search  under green roofs for the hell of it, since I made up me mind a LONG while ago, about this new rip off with councils, codes and some LEEDS crap, that may be cool in countries with snow, but not in the tropics.


Now If interested, I would suggest  that go an search on your own. Let it suffice now that green roofs are supposed to absorb rain water, insulate, create habitats for wildlife and combat heat island effect.


UHI is not for islands, sorry. It is the heat by concrete/asphalt construction materials retaining heat in urban contexts and releasing it at night.


I never touched the subject but it is worthy of investigating.  It is a clear nice example of how any environmental related matter, directly or not,
becomes an opportunity, a scam, regulations and rip offs.


In Puerto Rico, American Lawn, an old acquaintance, tree butchers of Monte Hiedra Mall, are installing one with the characteristics mentioned: hedges and lawns in the new Music Conservatory.


If one construct anything with a purpose, without considering cautiously the selected vegetation, the polluting, noise and irritation created with the tools used in its maintenance, where is your intelligence?

 EDITORIAL

I have never understood why would any one study to become an engineer, architect or landscape architect and design every stupid structure looking as a vertical or horizontal match box, with A FLAT roof to save a few bucks, creating an epidemic of roof leaks costing millions to consumers for the last seventy years. Not to get into the aesthetics of such feeble minded college graduates. Screw them ALL.

TIPS FOR TROPICAL GUERRILLA GARDENING

T here are not many blogs on the subject.  Check gurrillagardening.com if the subject suits your needs.  In Puerto Rico, USA, garden butchers with trimmers, chainsaws or machetes might appear like Jari Potes', dementors,  destroying all vegetation getting on their guai, since the imbeciles can not tell a weed from others
now in third...

Antigonum, not necessarily the first, but certainly a pioneer, planted a Tamarindus indica, Merremia quinquefolia, Canavalia Maritima, by
the Sagrado Corazon train station.
In the abandoned San Carlos Hospital,
the first two, above, plus Pandanus, 
Agave Americana and  Cosmos sulphureous.

In the abandoned house next door:

Bauhinia, Thevetia peruviana, Agave americana, Cosmos, Hipomoea guamoclit/aegyptia, Diffenbachia, Philondendron, Carica papaya, Jathropha gossypifolia, Alocasia and Costus.
This house has been mentioned previously since I used to weed and trim the jungle it becomes.  It is remarkable for the old Vitis vinifera.  I had one of those firsts in life, after tasting some isle grapes about a year ago.

Unfortunately, twice in a row, butchers dementors appeared out of nowhere machetes in hand, dismembering the vine with the early grapes, leaving the ground bare.
back to the studio

I know...Sorry, the tips.  Try seeds of any kind, I do not use seed bombs as they do in template geographies. Just throw them. From my experience 2 out of 10, perhaps better if rainy season, will
 germinate.

Off roots stems and any adequate plants by division. Try to hide what you plant if
in the above mode. Cross your fingers.
The dementors come when least expected.  No matter if dementors do their thing, keep trucking.

I remind you our soil in Santurce, not in Barcelona, but Puerto Rico, is pure sand with very little clay. This facilitates any guerrilla planting since no tools are required.

I certify for the record,  that all named vegetation, is alive and kicking.  Any plant similar to Diffenbachia will grow out of a piece thrown in the distance as long as some shade and humidity is available.

In brief, down here many kinds of plants will grow, without digging a hole, just laying will allow them to develop roots, similar to air layering.

That is that.  Apadad e iros...

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

SOIL SWAP BY RIO TINTO

IT would be such a trip to test the readers dropping by, to find out if they know where in hell is Puerto Rico, in a world map.  The USA citizens, coloreds, whites and blacks, no matter their college degrees, are not only ignorant about this irrelevant issue, but about foreign languages, cultures as well.

I am under the suspicion that many readers, gardeners or not, here and there, buy their potting soil at the nearest store of their preference.  This is also true when in need for remedies, organic or not for turf, plant or soil pests.

In five years I bought potting soil once.  I have been recycling the one I use in twenty pots, mostly made of fiberglass, no plastic is allowed.  The idea is simple.

After daily or every other day  sweeping of  concrete grounds, all organic matter is deposited in a 3 feet tall pot.  One third, is soil, dry and green leaves, coffee grounds, dog hair and shredded paper.  Earth worms collaborate in decomposing. The whole is turned, 
ventilated once a week.


Today was philanthropy day out in RIO.
I took the train, two plastic bags in hand.
One soil/compost to that ghost town, missing only the tumble weed, overcrowded, with foreigners, illegals or not from La Espanhola.


Some plants, not to be mentioned, were transplanted.  One of the pragmatic results of this activity is watching how them plants develop, with decaying soil, 
compacting, minerals on top by capillary action, root spread and depth.


I am sick of so many people writing, talking about being self sufficient, sustainability, organic this or that, but in reality all is bullshit.  All requires a level of constant commitment. Not only when you watch the news.


In consequence all the words, become a bluff, or water and salt.


That was yesterday. Today it was glysophate day. I sprayed all cracks at home, Pillsbury boy front yard, sidewalk/gutter cracks in their house,
ours, the abandoned house next door, Farrukito the pimp, Tito the graphic artist and Mr. Santiago the freedom fighter of yesteryear.


That is that. Go. Take some pretty pictures of your garden. Show them in your blog...Feel cool...


Apaga i vamonoh...

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

BOTANICAL INVENTORY ORIGINS OF THE

decided to move further, to become a point of reference. This could be the last issue regarding the botanical theme in this space.  From now on, those interested in the subject, are invited to share my traditional humble focus in/with to caribbean botanical review. blogspot. Perhaps another trend will be set, down these here backwards archipelago.

While doing the research, I discovered, even when it is so evident, that probably over thirty percent of my collection is endemic and/or native, without any conscious intention.  If you recall, my mocking ways started due to excessive importance given to that segment of vegetation by foreigners in charge of Parque Donha Ines and their feeble ignorant minded isle followers.

endemismotrasnochado.blogspot,  was borne as a result. Right now, it has reached 1,750 cities, 105 countries in five continents.  How it spread by the wind, germinating in far away lands will always be a mystery.  Perhaps, it is natural, as you can see from the list below. The collection of plants originate in five continents.  Some have been around for centuries, now considered natives.


Flora and fauna, are just like people. As 
migrants they come and go. Not necessarily for 'a better future', but the season for feeding and housing, in a never ending circle.


ORIGINS

Pithelobium dulce  Mexico
Bouganvillea   Brasil
Euphorbia pulcherrima   Mexico
Cuphea hissopifolia  Central America
Plumeria rubra    Mexico
Allamanda cathartica   Brasil
Hibiscus rosa sinensis  Asia-India
Thunbergia erecta   Africa
Gardenia augusta  China
Murraya paniculata  Asia-Malasia
Manihot esculenta PR-USA
Citrus aurantifolia  East Indies
Malpighia punicifolia  PR-USA
Catharanthus roseus  PR-USA
Asystacia gangetica  Africa-Asia
Zephyrantes grandiflora  Mexico
Ruellia brittoniana  Mexico
Carica papaya Tropical America
Bryophyllum pinatum  Madagascar
Coccoloba uvifera   America
Antigonum leptopus Mexico
Thunbergia alata East Africa

I have had great pleasure making  this list.  It proves that nationalism, pride in state/flag/family is a bunch of crap.  The ignorant, fools or not, attach out of proportion importance to many things without any pondering. Bryophyllum pinatum, a medicinal plant, very much in use in the past,  is a wonderful example.  This plant, an icon in our folk culture, poetry, music and literature came from the other side of the world, Madagascar, also an island. Please visit: yerbabruja.blogspot.com for more information on this plant. That blog belongs to a group of millions of still borne in the web, its name, evidence of what I wrote about the plant.

Apaga i vamonoh.
  1. NOTE FROM THE EDITOR 
Considering  the  inventory, over
100, it is going to take more than one
post.  I might include the family, for the hell of it.  Origins are debatable, please offer your reference.
  To be continued. 

If BOTANY, names and else, turns you off
a long trip on a short deck
is advisable.





 
.



W

Monday, November 22, 2010

CRITERION IN GARDENING

One of the most attractive features in any garden: Maine, Scotland, Spain is a dry wall.  It is visually captivating and as
that tv gardening weirdo P. J. Allen,  may say, perfect for the right enclosure.

If you have not noticed, my gardening practice tilts toward the hot, drought, salty, average shade, little humidity, surrounded by concrete (if you look at the pictures carefully) on the ground and around.

It is a pure urban concrete/asphalt context, environment surrounded in general, by not so bright people, living in absolute obscurity regarding what the environment is/should be in a healthy, with minimal or no quality of life values and/or possibilities.

If you are reading this and practicing  the rain forest gardening mode along a  panhandle girl,  thou shall not take this personally, or do, if you prefer.

Exposed to this uglier by day, noisy and heavy panorama, I go back home, searching for quiet and visual relief in the world wild web.  Sometimes I go blogging.  I start with excellent, regular, and shitty ones.  Hoping for  some refreshing, stimulating or challenging gardens, not pretty pictures without the garden as a whole, at least one or two botanical inventories or new ideas.  Instead, too often I  find the most common place, evident lack of imagination plant selection and/or composition,  not different from what I see here, concrete/asphalt reality, over there, I have to write and paint with my eyes.

Your garden stinks.  Mine also. As long as there are eyes and beholders anything 
may do. However, criterion wise mine may not, since it is not composed based on dull nurseries, or aesthetics only,  its beauty becomes less transcendental.  

What am I writing? It is time to call the spade a spade. Stop dreaming. Get some research done. Planting whatever suits your need is meaningless.  Is it hardy? Is it not? Who cares, what the people wants is something soothing to the spirit, to the eyes. Not that bunch of plants on top of the others without much thought, as in a dump.


Going to Home Depot and buying ten bromeliads in season, does not make a collection. What is a collection? Is it something one can throw away? And buying again next fall or spring?


Vertical gardening is not necessarily placing in a milk like crate some plants/weeds like specimens, nailing it to the wall, except in one's imagination.


If by vertical one means some vegetation hanging from a tree, a rock or wall, there is a Babilonian biblical one.  Looking at the pictures at right the seven vines are hanging, does that makes it a vertical gardening?


Every juan justifies his/her actions as individuals, as a society.  Smokers, the boxing, bull fighting industry, American football, TURFERS*, automobile/yatch freaks,
morbid obese, bulimics/anorexics and pornographers to name a few. Is the customer always right? * Turfers: people with lawns/palms/hedges, any of the tree or all. 

In brief.  Wise gardening should be a matter of wholes not parts.  Flora and Fauna, not us.  It is cool to identify the parts of the flower, you know, pistil, sepal and so on but insects/birds do not care about that, they go for the color, scent or both, that is that.  Same goes with exotic, native or endemic fads, at least feeding wise.


If your garden stinks (palms, turf, hedges, bromeliads, heliconias, gingers, Ravenala madascariensis, Strelitzia reginae) according to historical criterion, or in my subjective humble servant vocation with references, do not feel alluded. Keep trucking, pondering.


After all, a blog is just a blog. The  garden is not.  


Apaga i vamonoh.



 


 I

Friday, November 19, 2010

KILLER TOMATOES ATTACK

I had a nightmare, actually I lived it. It keeps coming. Back and forth.  I am going to tell it once again.

He was a skinny fellow, played with dinosaurs in his childhood. His parents were biologists in a country in that third 
going on tenth world, judging from their rabbit like propagation in this finite earth.  At any rate, the fellow was dedicated and obtained titles from Deutshland, Belgium and USA. Fought as a lieutenant in Angola against those forces of Apartheid. Could take an automobile motor apart and put it back together.  Botany was his thing. 

Editors Note

In our world, botany, is two things. the context determines which. One is our subject, you know pistil and meosis. 
Botany is also botanica as in spirits, santeria, cigars, fortune telling, shells, spells, good and evil eye and lucky charms. 

Our hero, spent long hours in forests, jungles, his mission in life, studying cacti. What for? Take a wild guess, it is a matter of academicians, useless, indifferent people, in search of a NAME, recognition no matter how meaningless their studies,  except in UNIVERSITY circles.  These studies mean crap. To understand them, you have to take a course, maybe for a year, like one of those poetry or literature of the Golden Century in Spain, for example.

Our hero was EXPELLED from his country, in one of his research trips, he was not allowed to return. But, like for high performance athletes of certain sports from his country,  everything was swell, like a million. He landed in my concrete/asphalt, where other creatures of his kind, our own and his, subterranean, of entomological quality, landed him a job. 

But it was a WALT DISNEY like project not a just a  job. HE, with an ego like an elephant, better, a sperm whale, with a calcium cover, had a PARK, an arboretum like NO PUERCORICAN  ever saw or even dreamed.

But I WAS there. And witnessed the chaos, rip off, fraud, Goebbels like treatment of our patrimony. Flora and Fauna.


The Cuban in question, with total ignorance of notion/principles, credentials or experience in  forest restoration, is responsible for the destruction of 12 acres, leaving the soil bare, painting the asphalt pavement with brown/yellow acuarelas, at every down pour, during the four months rainy season.

With his squeaky voiced, flat, short, unattractive, dumb,  uneducated aboriginal wife, planted two hundred pounds of Kentucky Rye and Bermuda grass seeds!  Planted as in throwing over the caliche soil, already screwed up, since the fertile top soil had washed down.

How low are these two?  They stole the rooting hormones, my own,  from my working area. The day I discovered their deed their ignorance was evident once again. Albertico was immersing the cut stems in water, later in the powder like hormones. On top, no hole was made to plant the stems, to keep the hormones attached.  Jerk with a tittle.

Every single living creature, in soil, on top of it,  grasses, bushes, trees, fauna destroyed, without any INVENTORY of  FLORA AND FAUNA OR SOIL ANALYSIS.

Yet Alberto Areces Mallea, Phd and Gabriela Ocampo gave interviews in the mentally retarded news media in PR, as the great saviors or our endemic species.

The bullshit about the importance(out of context) of any endemic, was the seed of your favorite blog: endemismotrasnochado. It germinated in 105 countries, but this is about him, not yours truly.

Any movement toward saving any endemical species in air, water or soil, has to jugde and weight the environment as a whole. One does not pick off rooted trees from a desert like environment with 35 five inches of annual rain, (south of PR) growing in mostly rocky/sandy fertile sandy soil due to lack of erosion, planting them later in concrete like caliche clay soil already washed out, due to the extermination of the flora growing on top.

In brief NO attemtp to save ANY species in danger of extinction is meaningful unless the WHOLE environment is put in the picture. 

"Saving" the Puertorican parrot is a good example.  For the last twenty years, MILLIONS of USA funds have been wasted to save these birds requiring rain or wet forests to survive.  At the same time the environment surrounding them parrots becomes highways and building projects, encroaching, increasing the evaporation and heat.  

Alberto Areces Mallea and Gabriela Ocampo should be flogged or in jail. 
007 Recursos Naturales the agency giving permits and endorsing this atrocity. The municipal authorities in Trujillo Alto for giving the land and looking the other way. The Board of Directors of the Luis Munhoz Marin Foundation then and now,
Luis Acevedo Vila, Melo Munhoz all are guilty and should pay when ever the times allows it for their destruction, complicity in these crimes and profiting.

Yep, I got pictures for those interested in research or fact checking. What about
the tittle?

As in previous posts, it is for effect.  But let film buffs know there is a film with the tittle: Attack of The Killer Tomatoes.
Which bring me to the end. With this thought.

Hybridization as it was known, will not be as important with transgenics,
at least for profit. Think of those pastures of soy in Brasil, Argentina, Uruguay, washed down with tons of Glyphosates, killing all vegetation near by, except them soy plants.
Apagad e iros...

I dedicate this post to
those islander bloggers,
in particular to 
THE LAME BLOGS GUILD

"To die blogging is to live forever"

as one of them
coined this wonderful
statement. 


 

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

A DOG'S EYE VIEW OF MAN



BY
JAMES THURBER

If man has benefited immeasurably by his association with the dog, what, you may ask, has the dog got out of it?  His scroll has, of course, been heavily charged with punishments: he has known the muzzle, the leash and the tether; he has suffered the indignities of the show bench, and the tin can on the tail, the ribbon in the hair; his love life with the other sex of his species has been regulated by the frigid hand of authority, his digestion ruined by the macaroons and marshmallows of doting women.  The list of his woes could be continued indefinitely. But he has also had his fun, for he has been privileged to live with and study at close range the only creature with reason, the most unreasonable of creatures.

The dog has more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the  more laughable of the two animals.  The dog has long been bemused by  the singular activities and the curious practices of men, cocking his head inquiringly to one side, intently watching and listening to the strangest goings-on the world.  He has
seen men sing together and fight one another in the same evening.  He has watched them go to bed when it is time to get up, and get up when it is time to go to bed.  He has observed them destroying the soil in vast areas, and nurturing it in small patches.  He has stood by while men  built strong and solid houses for rest and quiet, and then filled them with lights and bells and machinery.  His sensitive nose, which can detect what's cooking in the next township, has caught at one and the same time the bewildering smells of the hospital and the munitions factory. He has seen men raise up great cities to heaven and then blow them to hell.

For your reading pleasure
To Diva and Mimi RIP

ABOVE AND BEYOND THE INTERVIEW

GUEST STAR
camille matojo roldan soto
El Nuevo Dia



cmrs:  You have not been interviewed in quite some time,
is there any reason, why know?

AC:     I am not sure, but after four hundred issues one may repeat things consciously or vice versa, playing with my second language for the hell of it or not.  No one else does it, I was not in the mood earlier, now, I am. 

cmrs:  The story in the tittle?
AC: Simple.  I live in a zone 11 in case you wonder. 100 miles long, thirty five wide,  3.5 million people, 2 million cars, 150,000 abandoned dogs,
4 shitty newspapers, 4 TV channels, besides over 100 foreign cable ones, 4 mediocre beers local/imported, population is  about one half catholic/protestant, 40 percent unemployment on one hand.  Negros, coloreds and whites, the ethnic composition.

cmrs:  Can I proceed with the next question?
AC:    It is my show, allow me to finish.  The Discovery of America, celebrating the arrival of that great navigator, Cristoforo Colombo, evidences the ethnic preferences and national tilt...In elementary school, every child dresses up as  a conqueror from Spain or conquered Indian. But not a single slave.

cmrs: What is the big deal?
AC:   Lets move to other fronts.
cmrs: Why? You ve not answered.
AC:    And you are an idiot, a  mediocre journalist from El Nuevo Dia. I answered already that stupid one, I call the shots.

cmrs:  Fine, my apologies to you enlightened one.
AC:     D'accord. It was about time some one recognized the fact. At any rate, not one slave in the schools celebrations, however the news media, text books are always preaching about the good negroes, how they are intrinsic part of the culture, improved our national diet, MUSIC and RHYTHM, their endurance, innate brilliance for singing, dancing, playing ball.

cmrs:   What about intellectual skills?
AC:      What intellectual skills?  Who cares? In any culture with this kind of ethnic composition is the same thing. What matter is like USA,  baseball, hot dogs and apple pie.  Watch an NBA or NCCA basketball game to get the picture.

cmrs:  Are you sure, you bitter one?
AC:    You are invited to come by, do some tourism. Check the roads, highways, weeds, cracks, garbage, for a token, one button will do. I have the guts, dare to paint what I see with my eyes.

cmrs:   During these four/five years, I have noticed that you have avoided  politics, the window glass democratic games played in Puerto Rico every four years. Why is that?

AC:   Oh so you have been a fan all that time?  Bilingual one.  That is what places me above and beyond.  The super patriots, fire eaters, communists and socialist and the FOUR STRAY CATS, are no different from the rest.  The want to be FREE, not because it may/may not make sense. It is just
because everyone else seems to be, forgetting that as some segments throw it at their face: "Puerto Rico is the only colony exploiting the mother country".

cmrs:  Wow/guau, (bilingual) that is heavy. Are not you afraid the left may stone/flog you in public? 

AC:   The left and patriots can go an suck an egg, they are not worthy a hogs fart.  How can you allow a foreigner, to be the ONLY, spoke person on ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES, from the SIERRA Club?  Among them fools NOT one writes about environmental issues as the situation demands.  Only when some PR/USA conflict shows up. Or are we going to drink/eat/consume freedom and liberty? Where is the patriotism in a real context?

cmrs:  Could you write/say something good about your country for once?

AC:   The place where one lives is fortuitous.  In nature, many, a lot of species migrate long distances for mating, foraging, spending the winter and such, what country they belong to?
They move back and forth. Patriotism, nationalism and religion are not good at all, for any one.

cmrs:  How is that?
AC:    Are you blind, ugly witch, with Hector Marcano's figure? Think Kurds, Shiites, Sunis, blowing themselves up, along the innocent and not so, in their countries where they were borne, with  the Allah Akbar chant five times a day!

cmrs:  So what, we are in Puerto Rico.
AC:  Exactly.  An island with half the population idle, blaming USA for our intellectual limitations, lack of will, 
baile, botella i baraja, lacking a culture, a tradition for systematic maintenance, thinking, analysis, should cut the freedom crap and start showing some skills to solve, create, imagine solutions to our problems now, with love or hate. It is immaterial. Improving with actions, not just thoughts of the moment or reacting.




Monday, November 15, 2010

IMAGINE YOU WRITE A BLOG NOBODY READS

Y ours truly thought about it in the beginning, for four months, until some Amilcar, from Savarona, me original neighborhood, left some solid, to the point comments in 1997, about Santurce, the island.

After that,  most of the keyboard practicing I do with them blogs,  has been swell or honky dory, adjectives that have fall in disuse for quite some time.

As an outsider, my popularity down here is very difficult to define, but if you visit 
endemismotrasnochado.blogspot. you will notice that happy visitors from 105 countries continue to drop by in that blog I can not access anymore.

Which brings moi to one of my favorite rants: automobiles.  One of the most beautiful bridges of  the times, the George Washington, connecting New York with New Jersey,  in the upper west side in Manhattan, shows a traffic jam from beginning to end 60/70 years ago in one of the black and white photos in the art deco bus terminal walls.

Watching some documentary about the nightmares caused by automobiles, motorcycles and trucks in Spain during the same period, traffic jams, no place to park in cities, accidents, pollution, noise,
and stress are mentioned as a result.

Following the USA economic model of 
mortgage, house, car and children made people forget that one can build roads and highways left and right, however the amount of vehicles will always overcome the proportion of available space to park and drive,  no matter how fast you built, destroy the environment, along with  FLORA AND FAUNA.


Why do people need a new model of their favorite brand of car/truck whatever, every year?  In Cuba, probably 75 percent of the private cars are ,5,6,7 decades old.  No waste, no junk yards since parts are always been recycled or built.  And lots of space to park and drive.


China and India went the monkey see monkey do, ways. Too late now to stop those far away lands, with cultures of thousands of years, people who should have known better.


Because highways, roads, streets, bridges need constant maintenance,  like a garden, with dramatic differences.


In Puerro Rico and USA, most pavements went without any kind of serious repair, except the patch and pray fashion.  You pray that no accident takes place, but corrosion, cracks, never rest.


Repairs? Not now, later, thanks and pardon the inconvenience.


This proves that knowing history, learning history to avoid the mistakes of them fools in the past is a bunch of crap.


Here is no different. Those superior beings, self anointed protectors of our language, history, tradition and customs are exactly the same idiots in every culture, country I can think of.


I am still waiting to read somewhere that  some environmental organization (Sierra Club fools come to mind), group or individual demand some accountability to housing and highway developers. They have been a plague,  the worst enemies of any chances of survival for FLORA/FAUNA, our own,  clean water and air.

I am afraid its has been written before, nobody pays attention, it has to be repeated.  The worst thing, not out of the question, is that we end just like the film proposal in 'Soylent Green' with Charlton Heston.  


Apaga i vamonoh.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

HORTICULTURE LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING MEANING

S ome fan mail left me with a pondering mood.  She from a far away oriental archipelago, a former colony of Spain. The father land of the most important boxer now, and most notorious shoe collector before Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City, with 2,000 pairs, now a member of their government, if I am not mistaken.

First, she notices my anger, as if discovering the Mediterranean one more time.  Sure pompous, darling, it is part of my signature blogs, character.

If I had some pride, I would add misanthropist, as the virtue I care about. Anger is meaningless, look at it as register.


Which brings me to a cross road, when you reader or writer of blogs express your perception or reality, do you have a reader in mind, or you care not if they have an elementary school level or a Phd?  I do not.


However, one should demonstrate caution when telling a living legend their feelings, reactions, perceptions to the other.  Ability to comprehend where the other is coming from, Language, ideal reader, semantics, intention, tone, register, are different things, Horticulture another.


I have noticed when I read other blogs, at least in the top five, some masterful language usage.  You will not find that here, anger, opinion, impatience dominate over style, proper usage or rules. Screw them and you, if you think form goes over substance.


Photography is another remarkable aspect of the top five. By the way,  of  this group, 3 are located between New Zealand and India. Do you know who you are? This blog is not in that exclusive group either.


But I am all ALONE in the Caribbean. I have checked one blog from some egotist former fashionista, a stiff blue blood black woman from Barbados. Both of them suck, for one simple reason.


If you have a blog, about the self, an excuse to write,  not a garden, vegetation, nature, installation, collection, you are full of manure.


I think the blog is just a tool to learn, kick butt, rant, ventilate, debate, telling it like it is. From MY context, perception, environment. It could be useful, pragmatic or not for yours. This blog is not it.


Sophistication is all that should be expected, placing the focus where it belongs. Writing style is a little part of the whole. What matters is, the garden itself, interaction between flora/fauna, the botanical names, the observations shared or not about diseases, microclimantes, maintenance problems from particular plants/trees/bushes.


All the rest is miscelaneous material that once discarded, show what YOU, know,
preach, practice.  In essence what your garden is.


One can be the greatest son of a beach on the isle, with the best garden in terms of keeeping records, or the opposite.


Or the fool on the hill or plateau with lawns,(careful not to show too much of it in photos, to avoid ostracism, cigarette smoker like or the ire from the gods), palms, bromeliads, Ficus or hedges, making noise and polluting water, air, soil. A typical law abiding, mortgaged, married with fat, ugly, dumb children and fearful of god citizen. What would you rather be, is entirely up to you. 

Down here, in the necks of the concrete/asphalt, ecologically correct gardening, rules. Anger and misanthropy, assimetry and vines.  Thanks for allowing yours truly to reach your monitor.


Congratulations to those scratching below the surface. For all the  reigns in heaven await...


Time to go. Apaga i vamonoh, Imelda Marcos.

IF YOU LIKE THIS
OR IF YOU DID NOT
check my new blog


CARIBBEAN BOTANICAL REVIEW

Azucenas and Nardos Mistery Revealed

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

BOURET HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY NEW INDUCTEE

I was pondering if I should be more specific. It does not matter if the people/populace get the wrong perception. My over one hundred installation should get an appropriate mean, blunt name:
antigonum cajan's 
first urban residential
NATURE SANCTUARY of the  SPANISH SPEAKING CARIBBEAN and adjacent miscellaneous  isles


 Looks cool!  At any rate, one of the greatest pleasures (not at your nursery) of your humble favorite plant collector is to find a DK plant in the garden, or the name of a DK whatever in a reference book, Borders, a blog, or searching in the wild web. 


A new vine, be careful, it will strangle any living bush/tree.  I had to get rid of it in 2 different places. One was under the Bouganvillea in the west side.  It was a 1/8 of an inch inside the bark!


Now, Centrosoma pubescens grows along the various known vines in the north side fence, happy and unable to harm anyjuan except the metal bars.  The lesson?  If you  plant collected seeds in the wild, only when the flowers show, one may investigate the botanical name.


It has rained for the last two days. Vines take advantage of this condition to shed lots of dry leaves, that has to sweep to   to avoid slippery accidents. They end with the rest of  the compost in progress.


Many pigeons, two or three species,  visit daily our bird feeders. Certainly gluttons, messy and noisy. Diva the companion animal detest and scare them whenever in the mood.


On the other hand, Spindalis and other birds in that category,  rarely fight or make a mess as the above mentioned.


In the humming bird department, either the same one comes four times, in the morning/afternoon (they all look alike) or four different ones come at irregular intervals to feed on the Calliandra in the west side or Hibiscus in the south.



HOT OUT OF THE OVEN

I had mentioned my unwillingness to plant Capsicum florescens, for the constant need to spray under the leaves some pain in the ass white flies relative.
Well what to you know.. After planting at least a hundred  seeds, in the last season, five plants of a hot variety of this Capsicum are alive and kicking.  The Citrus evidently repel the culprits, growing in a relation of promiscuity, as
this type of cultivation was once called.
That is that, time to go...

LANGUAGE AND GARDENING

T here is no water. Yesterday was the same. The crumbling infrastructure of this wild west rushed like over built, since 1960 concrete/asphalt isle is falling apart.


The window glass of democracy, where you can buy legislation or a tribunal at the right price. A real living nightmare of society, in which some majority of feeble minded fools flaunt the flag with their pride beaming as if what 
their obtuse minds feel at the moment, will scratch the bottle, dance and deck or baile, botella y baraja 24/7.  Isle of Nothingness.

But the show must go on.  I would like to finish the previous, presenting two ways to look at the same thing. In this case, thoughts about nature and being, not necessarily poetry.

If you can not follow, skip it. But try to look at it as if you were evaluating a garden or installation.  Are you the light kind falling for easy, common place beauty, sterile aesthetics or you think of the whole, not just hedges, lawns, bromelias, ferns, one bush, flower, tree or plant, but the whole?  Would you go back? 


Globalization, the masses, brainwashing have made many people incapable of
questioning. Look at China and India moving at light speed toward destruction following blindly the highway, car, house, (they have the children, too many all ready) USA economic model. At any rate. 

These are two translations or interpretations.  The reference for the first is on the previous post. This is the other.


The Way of Life
According to Lao Tzu
by 
Witter Bynner
Translator
Capricorn Books
1960

81

Real words are not vain,
Vain words are not real
And since those who argue prove nothing
A sensible mind does not argue.
A sensible mind is wiser than he knows,
While a fool knows more than is wise.
Therefore a sensible mind does not devise resources:
The greater his use to others
The greater their use to him,
The more he yields to others...
and so on.

Archie J. Bahm
Version

LXXXI
He who is genuine is not artificial,
He who is artificial is not genuine.
He who is intelligent is not quarrelsome;
He who is quarrelsome is not intelligent. 
He who is wise is not pretentious
He who is pretentious is not wise,
and on and on..

Well so what?  I just wanted to share views about men/nature that are not necessarily available or discussed.

Most of the time the real connection between men/nature, what the relation with nature should be, is presented with primitive, aboriginal cultures as good examples most of the times.

American Indians, some in Papua Nueva Guinea, Africa and such.  However, it seems that this forgotten, necessary awareness is only understood by some scientists, ecologists, environmentalists, horticulturalists and gardeners making noise about it like sparkles in the news, but nobody really cares.  If they do, they show it only at the computer monitor requesting signatures for this or that.

Time to go. Apaga i vamonoh.


 
i

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