THE YEARS OF FAMINE

WATCHING the  BBC or RTV.ES  news it is difficult not to think about those less fortunate, fire, floods or drought destroy the land and  their means to feed themselves and/or their animals.  Hundred  of years ago plant diseases and insect pests created similar situations.      Here  an excerpt from:

FOOD IN HISTORY 

Reay Tannahill

STEIN AND DAY

Publishers New York

1973 

pages 116-118 

In the Rhine Valley, in  A.D. 857, came the first serious recorded outbreak of ergotism, in which thousands of people died, poisoned by their daily bread.  Rye is susceptible to a particularly virulent fungus, known as ergot, which contains twenty poisons including lysergic acid  diethylamide--the hallucinogen LSD.

If the rye is badly affected, eating bread made from it leads either to intense abdominal pain, delirium, gangrene and death, or to that acute inflammation of the skin which in the ninth century, drove sufferers to insanity and gave ergotism the common name of "Holy Fire."  In the hundred years following A.D. 857, Europe endured twenty "grieveous famines"--some of them lasting for three or four years of succession.

The south did not escape, any more than the north.  There had been wars there, too between  the all-conquering Arabs and the Byzantines, and in their triumphal progress along the Mediterranean the Arabs had carried with them a single small bush which was going to bring havoc to the agriculture of southern Europe.  Until the early Middle Ages, the deadly black stem rust which can lay a whole harvest to waste had been almost unknown in the west.  With the advent of the barberry bush, however, which plays host to the rust parasites during certain stages of their development, disease began to ravege the wheat fields.  As the barberry spread, valued for the curative potion which could be extracted from its stems and for the brilliant berries which made a refreshing conserve, so did wheat rust, flourishing wherever there were warm rains, fogs or heavy dews.  By the early part of  the tenth century Spain was suffering from appalling failures of the wheat harvest, which may well have been to rust, and which (notably in A.D. 915 and 929) brought famine in their wake. 

Where there was famine, there was also cannibalism.  What was said of  India a few centuries later, was probably equally true in tenth-century Europe.  "Life was offered for a loaf, but none would buy; rank was to be sold for a cake, but none cared for it...

Destitution at last reached such a pitch that men began to devour each other, and the flesh of a son was preferred to his love.  Demand produced supply.  In some of the more isolated regions of central Europe killer bands roamed the country side,  waylaying travelers, cooking their flesh, and selling it to the highest bidder.   

Purchasers may have been told the meat was pork (which cannibal communities of the modern world have said it resembles), or mutton--even "two legged mutton," which was what the Chinese called it when there was a famine in the northern provinces in the twelfth century.   Cannibalism was to persist in Bohemia, Silesia and Poland until the end of the Middle Ages, and actuality which helped to lend color to legends of werewolves and vampires.

Nevertheless, during these dark and often despairing years,

new developments in agriculture were taking place which were soon to have a revolutionary effect, no only upon the food of western Europe, but on the whole of society. 

I can say that having done some time in quite a few colleges in Puerto Rico, MA and NY , I do not remember having heard or read these stories once. 

However, the violent cultures  and sacrifices of Mayan and Aztecs to name two, were always repeated over and over.

This picture was portrayed in a film, "Soylent Green" with Charlton Heston.  If you care for a modern view on the subject check the trailer below or watch the whole movie:

  http://youtu.be/SVpN312hYgU

that is that

MONEY AND MANAGEMENT IN THE GARDEN

IF YOU are a regular on these pastures you may remember I was trained in the NY Botanical Garden in Commercial Horticulture Landscaping  Management, the classes for the certificate of 162 hours are similar in many aspects to those for a degree in agronomy.

SO what? If you are a landscape architect, garden designer, gardener, plantsperson, garden writer, monitor or dirt environmentalist  or anything related but not mentioned.

 
 Simple. Any type of gardening in the long run cost money one way or the other.  Please remember that energy spent trimming/pruning
planting equals money if you are working for somejuan else. However if Juan is working for you it is  at your expense..

This beautiful photo demonstrate a paradigmatic installation anywhere in Puerto Rico, rainforest or desert like eco-region.  Everything, no matter where you go is the same with little variation in the inventory (about 15 species), even the stupid curves are the same. The lawns are always cut too short,  to save a little money with less maintenance visits to the proprietor.

Since the proprietor does not know elbow from arse, this practice kills the lawn eventually, lacking height to photosinthetize. For the maintenance company is cool, since a new lawn is a fresh chance for billing.*

When you plant anything so close to a lawn, the blow/cut companies or individuals will screw up what is not lawn, trees, bushes and plants. What do they care?  and forget about placing anything as a border/division...it costs money.

Money, money...If you are a banker, stock broker, real estate speculator  or similar, skip this post, the state/politicians in your country will pay, or the IMF, you will always have money no matter if you embezzle it or is lost in toxic loans, at least in the Eurozone.

If you are not, please take this into consideration. Noise and pollution, strangers in your property once or twice a month, making your life and of that of your neighbors miserable with trucks, trimmers, blowers, lawnmowers. A lawnmower on, for an hour,  pollutes as much as an automobile  driven in a 20 mile ride (CO2).

How does one should calculate the billing, individual or company?
The cost to the customer should include: the cost of oil, gas, propane, including the time and distance to and from the site where the work is to be done,  depreciation of equipment, trucks and else, men/hour, and anything that cost money.  Once this is done you determine how much the fool on the hill hiring you is going to pay by day, not hours.  The wise ones have two rates, one for trimming/pruning one for lawns.

In Puerto Rico, most gardeners/butchers for hire get  50 USA dollars a day.  In the majority of the cases there is  no social security, days off except Sunday, vacation, sick time, just like cheap labor is treated anywhere in the world. There is not much difference in the private or public sector..  Forget about security equipment when using trimmers or pesticides, it cost money. 

The advantage of having some training mentioned above is that  any views are not capricious, arbitrary; when any garden sucks, in  nine out ten, they are also costly and polluting.  There are variables in  aesthetics, but that is second fiddle in my opinion. Another handicap stink gardens have, is a lack of connection with the flora, fauna, eco-region context surrounding, just a caricature.

One post in mind: The Impossible Dream or looking for some beauty on this neck of the concrete/asphalt garden installations.

that is that

* Working with David Ramirez, operating in the Alto Apolo housing projects moons ago, I noticed too many white flies on the Ixoras to be installed in some property.  When told of the problem he stated:

' Do not worry, just plant them, later I will drop by, spray some and get a little money on the side'. 

CREATIVE AND COMPARATIVE GARDENING

  AFTER the sudden and undeserved notoriety -oink-yours truly has achieved during the last couple of days in the East Indies, far, distant and unknown for most beings, human and not so, also South America for the fellows in Blotanical, the West Indies have  more ethnic variety, and  historically if I may..besides a wider, musical and gastronomical spectrum.

At any rate, I decided to visit the worthy constituents followers of that island mentioned a couple of weeks, or was it a week?  I found a couple of peculiar things that will require an objective description-no photos needed-to share what some think of their garden or somewhat simple/complicated concepts as ZEN.

Some lady takes a photo of her jungle like back yard, a concrete plastered square in the center.  In the left side, a gas grill with plastic cover.  To the center a table/umbrella with four chairs very clear they are from Home Depot.  There was something else I can not recall but left no doubts in me mind, when I saw it Home Depot garden displays or Green Industry convention exhibitions  hit me hammer like.

Besides these accessories adding beauty, there was a palm tree in the back surrounded by dk vegetation, mostly folliage, in the front of all,  a banana tree. Believe it or not, in Florida.  The suggested feeling to the author of this creation?  'My  ZEN moment of the week or day', can not remember which.

This made possible a new Eureka moment,  new concept, caricature gardening, coined by yours truly. Search for the exact meaning of the word and you will have to share my view.  All the elements mentioned result in a grotesque. absurd space that many, too many people think as cool, acceptable and attractive. 
 

THIS aberration is horrendous!  Yet, if you have never read a few words about gardening composition or the elements of gardening design you will too, find it attractive.  The terrible thing is that it was featured in a site from Spain in which the most documented garden in the Caribbean appeared before. I have the suspicion that anyjuan who sent this crap, did it in spite, you be the judge. http://www.guiaverde.com/blog/el-jardin-de-nuestros-lectores/el-huerto-agrochic-de-marilyn.

Bai di guei, the one in Florida was not prettier than this one in Puero Rico. I have been accused of many things-oink- but not being brutally critic against my own breed is not one. This should  I make  a suggestion, not a command, to meditate.  If I started my path in this vale of tears with my own, what makes you so special?  If your garden really sucks and I or anyjuan with trajectory says so, kindly inquire why/how or otherwise shut up, humbly. Accept you have made mistakes, too many, being proud of it. 

 that is that

 





BONUS

IF YOU like the garden on top, you will certainly love this one also. Check the beauty and imagination in the design and colored stones, a real miss match of texture, the more the merrier. Remind one of those paintings 4 year old do in the nursery.

 http://www.facebook.com/pages/First-Impression-Landscaping-Inc/268565646578

ON CRITICAL VOWS AND LAME GARDENING

WHEN I decided to share my views on the practice, the inspiration were a couple of foreign jerks who destroyed five hectares of soil in Trujillo Alto.  Pretty please, with sugar on top, remember that for perspective and focus or dissident views, there is room for all.

I became a creative horticultural critic by need, an urge to denounce stupidity, not from the illiterate foreign illegal/native hired worker for peanuts gardener, but in my case, a Phd from the NY Botanical Garden and his wife, an 'agronomist'.  After all, there are movies, theater and literature critics. The abysmal difference between those and yours truly is that I practice the skills likewise my peers, foes and/or friends, those I criticize. In addition to criteria, trajectory and credentials.

INTERMISSION

THE KEYS TO DREAMLAND

EPILOGUE 

The critic has always been called a judge of literature,  which means not that's he is in a superior position to the poet, but that he ought to know something about literature, just as a judge's right to be on a bench depends on his knowledge of  law. If he's up against something the size of Shakespeare,

he is the one being judged.  The critic's  function is to interpret every work of literature in the light of all the literature he knows, to keep constantly struggling to understand what literature as a whole is about.

Literature as a whole is not an aggregate with red and blue  ribbons* attached to them. like a cat show, but the range of articulate human imagination as it extends from the height of imaginative heaven to the depth of imaginative hell.  Literature is a human apocalypse, man's revelation to man, and

not a body of adjudications, but the awareness of that revelation, the last judgement of mankind .

Humility allows those truly humble, to find connections between apparently disconnected fields. If you change literature for gardening/horticulture in the excerpt above, you will, unless you are a real post colonial, Lady Gunga Din, fashionista from the East Indies, with a distant, British blue blood syndrome airs, tropical 5 o'clock tea and crackers, fish and chips wrapped in newspaper,  driving in the wrong lane, clockwise, you will notice that just  like literature, theater, movies.....whatever nojuan will be allowed to wash his/her hands......as the legendary judge in the Bible. oink ,oink.

Antigonum has spoken/written,
children you may now leave in peace

oink/oink
that is that

THE KEYS TO DREAMLAND

BY

NORTHROP FRYE

The Norton Reader

4th Edition

page 218

Suppose you are walking down the street of a North America city*.  All around you is a highly artificial society but you don't think of it as artificial: You are so accustomed to it that you think of it as natural.  But suppose your imagination plays a little trick on you, a kind that if often does play and you suddenly feel like a complete outsider, someone's who just flown in from Mars on a flying saucer.

Instantly you see how conventionalized everything is; the clothes, the shop windows, the movement of the cars in traffic, the cropped hair and shaved faces of the men, the red lips and blue eye lids that women put on because they want to conventionalize their faces or "look nice" as they say which means the same thing.  All this convention is pressing toward uniformiry or likeness.

THERE is clearly a strong force making toward conformity in society so strong that it seems to have something to do with the stability of society itself.  In ordinary life even the most splendid things we can think of,  goodness and truth and beauty, all mean essentially what we are accustomed to.

I was skimming through the pages of the book mentioned above, when I found this critical essay on literature, perhaps the best I have ever read.  While reading, I could not help to extrapolate, thinking, picturing many gardens I have observed in person critically and/or virtually, the latter a majority. 

The dreadful scenery that surrounds me, a soundtrack with irritating noise possibilities in an urban context moved along as a photo play, your humble servant feeling just  like the mentioned character from Mars.

That is the way I have felt this island since I was 15. The difference is that finally, at 61, I have been finding explanations thanks to gardening and horticulture, flora/fauna, habitats and nature.

Convention is what makes possible those beautiful lawns, golf courses, palm trees, hedges and over used plants,  mutilated trees, dead trees standing, pollution of all kinds
aimless, useless gardens requiring lots of irrigation, men/hours without many people wondering, thinking or even noticing what is wrong.

Now it is time to go.  The terrible thing is that while I am writing about gardening, aesthetics and foolish conventions in the practice, the problem cover other manifestations of life, ours and theirs (flora/fauna) in any continent extrapolating and all.

From the editor

*or the city where you live.

HURRICANE SEASON REPORT

IF YOU have never witnessed one, you may wonder is it like the movies, 'Key Largo', comes to mind, weather channel report?  Yes and No. The way people in Puerto Rico react with the news is always the same.  Happiness for owners of supermarkets, gas stations, hardware stores, with lots of profits to make.People and populace, in general, buy food stuffs, ice and alcohol as if there is no tomorrow for their particular funeral like celebration.

The first hurricane I remember, took place in 1956 or 57.  We spent the night accross our street, in one of the few concrete houses in the Munhoz Rivera street in Caguas Country.
The owners of the property allowed everyjuan to stay out of duty
more than neighborly love.  My child memories do not show most men worried at all, it was a celebration, Probably with Palo Viejo, my favorite fire water. 

I remember the next dark, windy and wet morning, electrical and telephone wires hanging loose, back and forth, moved by the wind. I can see at this moment, with little effort, me mother pushing holes in the cardboard like ceiling to let the accumulated water flow.

Among other hurricanes worthy of this post  there is one Hurricane Carter, a boxer, probably welter weight or middle my favorite then.  He went to jail for some crime that Bob Dylan among others thought he did not commit. Let the record show  that  boxing, football are sports prone to leave those in the practice, with mental senility or Parkinsons, another convention.  I declare I still enjoy boxing during the Cassius Clay era, but there is nothing I can do about what took place already, only in the future/present one may influence if  any radical change take place. What about that despicable sport of bullfighting?  Cultural significance is the excuse! Not to get into the foolish San Fermin, festivities. A great source of tourism and income. Barbarians with spoons!

The most recent, memorable Katrina, left the USA in shambles.  However, looking at natural phenomena, one should separate stupidity in actions, construction, dikes and such with the inevitable:
strong winds and lots of water create costly damages as a result of foolishness.

When I saw one of those huge ships in the Mississippi, it was scary as hell, after all is a river, no matter its size. Now if you consider  width, length and depth, how can any sane person
believe one can contain it in  the receptacles built to keep it straight in its place?  No wonder  Louisiana and near by states were left like crap!

Now lets move to tornado STATES, probably around 12. Why do they insist on using wood for construction?  Every time one of those hundreds of tornadoes hit their target, everything looks like tooth picks blown at random. Why not build underground?  What is wrong with the  imagination of architects, engineers, government agencies, people and populace? 

In Puerto Rico, is no different! Regarding electrical wires, logic demands underground wiring. Imagine, if the retards in charge of those issues had any imagination, every damned wire would be underground. More expensive to build but cheaper to maintain in the long run, unless I am a retard also.

All the above, if you have imagination, or if you make a little effort putting things in a wider scheme of things has to do with convention, being conventional.  

That is our-in the third person- I hate so much, our project for the following post, in literature and gardening.  Think about it.

until then

w.

SMALL URBAN PRAIRIES

THE owners of these properties, one is vacant,  belong to the lowest of them castes anywhere. Pure and simple riff raff.  Noisy, uneducated hogs.  Any Christian principle of god fearing people would be tested by these bastards and bastardettes. We live in the middle.

Yet, thanks to their lack of maintenance--our garden not the most manicured in the world by any standard-- looks like a million, at least in my eyes.

That on one hand, on the other, this unedited vegetation, mostly grasses, broad leaf weeds and shrubbery of different kinds offer some visual relief against concrete or perhaps worse, bare soil.

Besides,  the flowers and seeds provide nectar and food for birds and insects;

I could, with simple shears and hand pruners do some editing to improve the wild appearance but they do not deserve it.  Let the urban prairies be, our flora and fauna will appreciate it. 

that is that