WEEDS SAGA AND EPILOGUE

I should have thought about it but I did not.  Any discussion about wheat, barley and rye, will require to mention the other 3 powerful gastronomical staples of the whole world: corn, potatoes and rice.  Now, there is no choice.  Here they are.

After some research, considering the varieties of rice,  Oryza sativa, its origins and how it was brought and cultivated in Spain by Arabs, I suggest that you search with the botanical in Wikipedia. 

Zea mays

On his early visits to Cuba, Columbus noted that Zea mays, maize was "most tasty, boiled roasted, or ground into flour".  When he returned to Spain, his most popular exhibits from the New World proved to be a few specimen "Indians" and some handfuls of gold dust, but he seems also to have taken maize seeds with him.

With the aid of the Venetians who carried it to the Near East, the Spaniards were instrumental in distributing maize around the Mediterranean.  Less directly, they also introduced it to Asia. When Ferdinand Magellan set out in 1519 to make another attempt on Spain's behalf to reach the Spice Islands by

a westward route, he probably took maize with him.  It was known

in the Philippines soon after, and by 1555 was sufficiently important in parts of China to rate a mention in regional history o the island province of Honan.  page 247

Solanum tuberosum

As soon as Spain began to organize her shipping to carry away the wealth of the Peruvian mines, she adopted potatoes as basic ships' stores.  The plant was therefore carried to Europe, and cultivated there, very soon after the conquest of Peru.  By 1573, enough potatoes were being grown in Spain for the Hospital de la Sangre at Seville to order stocks of them at the same time as other provisions.  page 258    

Food in History

by

Reay Tannahill

Stein and Day Publishers

1973 

I have to say that gardening provides a lot of possibilities in terms of learning different ways to approach it.  As time goes by,  I realize that mine is just another, among many, some are of my liking, most are not.   What matters is the result within flora, fauna, aesthetics, effort, joy and pleasure.


apagad e idos....

 

 BONUS

A  while ago I received a message from the other, lonely, naif,  country side island gardening blog.  It requested that I do not criticize whatever.  That it was too negative. That is like asking a drop of water not to make a hole in the rock, as the saying goes.  On the second issue,
well, every other blog is optimistic. Why do ALL bloggers have to share that view on gardening, real life or the other life?

My irritation was sky hi, since the compliments received in exchange were the lame ones, about the pictures not the abrasive content.  Honestly, I do not care about the pictures. I am not a photographer. 

There  there are tens of blogs with pretty pictures and great resolution, not to mention writing styles, modes, registers more suitable for the happy, complacent, realized, with an eternal smile,  taking life as it comes, contemplative, laid back comfortably sat, in their lazy chair, people.   I am not, nor is the blog.