CREATIVE PASSIVE WEEDING FOR SENIORS

 I CAN NOT  remember the last time I wrote anything about maintenance in a lawn mode.  Well, many people write about their weeding difficulties about grasses and broad leaf culprits. It is foreign to yours truly, since I have embraced them allowing their growth  in/out of  boundaries.

 I want to share an inexpensive way to create space between plants, groundcovers, weeds or lawn.  It is great for people my age in shape. Once the work is done you may change the design, or leave it there until the last judgement.

 Before anything, please trim any vegetation as short as possible to facilitate the project. Once the flat stones/tiles or else have been in place for a couple of weeks, bare space under the material, is created. Nothing left to do. I have used heavy materials but the same effects could be reached with thick layers of newspapers and/or cardboard, if you 'nail' them to the ground or place gravel or the material of your selection to keep them in place. However, this cheap method is unsightly, contrary to my system, much less so.

The flat stones were bought ten years ago in Bayamon City. I used them in a couple of projects before we moved to the occupied territory of Santurce. The brown and white tiles were collected during my strolls in the neighborhood.

I do not expect any demands from the reader regarding shapes, forms, angles, in brief, aesthetics. But I tell you one thing for sure, once you eliminate sun light from any weed, grass or plant that is that. You will get bare soil after some time.

I do not recommend weed blockers, I have seen some grasses coming through it like nothing. The advantage of  my system is that you could change the desing at any time, moving the material inches or feet away outwards  expanding the areas with  no vegetation. In turn it is possible to create
different heights and shapes as time goes by.  Another possibility is the vegetation that will surely grow between cracks/spaces. This will add to the beauty of the whole.  Some trimming with scissors may be necessary if you are into manicured, formal looks.

One thing to remember. You need good knees and back to do this type of work.  Now it is time to go.  In a couple of months, maybe less, this is our wet season, the green will show...

that is that





from the editor   

All this has been taking  place in the west garden, the side across the high bed with Barleria repens featured in caribbeanbotanicalreview last week.  The groundcovers:
Wedelia trilobata, Barleria repens, Syngonium, DK, Asystacia gangetica and Commelina elegans dominate this space.

MANTRAS

WHEN I started the journey in the this vale of tears, making the path as  I walked*, I was not  the  understanding, agreeable character I have  become.

It seems that everyjuan has his/hers mantrras in gardening. Orchids, heliconias, ferns, palms, lawns, hedges, gingers and palms to name a few. In Dave'sgarden.com, there is Palmbob, guess which is his. Once in a while he writes about cycads and related creatures.

I have about 20, however, weeds, preferably broad leaf and plants with weed behavior have been in the top lately.  Gardeners who understand how they propagate, their preferences in general would be better at this, spending less  energy, effort and chemicals to get rid of them  or embracing and loving them as your humble servant.

that being written lets go 

to Richard Mabey's

WEEDS

     pages 82-83

There is an ironic footnote to this story of the shifts between the supersticion of the Dark Ages and the openminded curiosity of the 

Age of reason.  It is, in a literal sense, a cloistered story.   Both monastery and university were physically characterized by walls.  Wall enclosed  their herb gardens and, symbolically, enclosed their knowledge, made it clear to the outside world where intellectual authority lay.  Plants with the potential to become weeds are, of course, defined by their contempt of boundaries. What happended in monastic herb gardens was that some of the medicinal herbs took to growing in the walls.  They used them as stepping stones into the outside world, and into a more popular conciousness.

The monasteries were thenselves institutions for traffic in weeds.  Some, such as the Cluniac Order ( a branch of the Benedictines), had abbeys in the far south of France, and would have brought medicinal herbs over with them.  Amongst were species that, like the weeds of agriculture, were natives of dry rocky places in the Mediterranean, and they found the dry stonework of the walls designed to keep them in was a congenial springboard for finding their way out.

Remnants of the walls of Bury St. Edmunds Abbey, where the Apuleius Platonicus Herbarium of 1120 was produced, still survive, and are adorned by weeds. Some are comparatively new (buddleia, for instance), showing that walls are also devices by which plants can get in.  But some - feverfew (for headaches), greater celandine (for eye complaints) and wallflower (for ulcers and for helping 'the chops or rifts of the fundament') - might just be descendants of plants  that grew in the Abbey physic garden 900 years ago.  All are now common on the stonework and in waste places throughout Britain.  

If the cultivated field provided a portal for weeds in the countryside, the boundary wall and the road were their gateways to the urban world.  Whatever institutions human created to preserve their civilisation from the wild, weeds found ways of exploiting it

  The more I read about weeds, the more tolerant I am with those I know, the ones I am getting to know...

That is that.

* from the Bible and a Joan Manuel Serrat song, not my coinnage

   .

GUERRILLERO THE CHRONICLES

I started the practice four years ago by the train station abandoned areas, planting seeds and four or five trees, twelve inches tall at the time, 2008.   Shortly after, everything was destroyed by
the dark forces with trimmers and machete yielding, municipal workers.  Only the Tamarindus indica in the photo, around thirty feet tall survived that first attack.

The activity took place before I learned abut guerrillagardening.org.  The group, based in England defined what it is conceptually.  If interested, go there and find out.  Yours truly,  not inclined to follow trends expanded the concept. Guerrilla gardening, besides being the practice of planting in spaces, private or public without a permit, could be expanded with a little vision.

I am not only interested in improving the appearance of any urban areas visible to  pedestrians and drivers, but to create an inventory of plants, trees, bushes that will overcome the seasonal  municipal butcher raids described above, including evident use of herbicides lately.

The plant selection is preferably self sown or those that will survive trimmer attacks as is now the rule.  The photos show some examples with their botanical names.

Developing the concept for our  horticultural situation in Puerto Rico, may or may not be significant for others, unless a wider scope in terms to my mantrra: flora and fauna.  Plants from nurseries will not do.chose

The  chosen ones have to tolerate drought/ heat in addition to the constant threat of the killing macheteros with trimmers.  Vines are perfect since most destruction does not reach the root system, coming back after some time.

Two weeks ago I decided to experiment with creatures like Polyscias and Sanseverias, the trunk of the first can be ridden of their leaves surviving, the latter can stand the attack due to the fibrous nature of their thick leaves.

So what?  Well, I am convinced by this silly activity in the eyes of the complacent segment of the gardening blog scene, that it is useful.  Some of the vines have shown a possibility in terms of erosion control, Erosion takes place not only in soils used for agriculture, but those disturbed by construction,  the number one murderers of flora and fauna in the urban and not so urban context.

EDITORIAL

That being written, lets move to the Caribbean. There are two blogs by an obscure Barbadian nincompoop.  One about her garden, the other, pure aged nostalgia of what herself  claimed Fashionista lost dreams.  Buahaja bilingual laugh! Check them out. 

I visit her blog for kicks, as I do with others.  I thought something was wrong with  her gardening practices/trajectory/credentials and egg shell ego after reading, observing a post about a Ficus pruned Puerto Rico fashion in her South American blog....buahaja...

This English blogger from Barbados--http://barbadosfromanotherview.blogspot.com-- has given me an intense mood of hilariousness. IF anyjuan paste and copy my criticism/view to the stupidity of  any gardening practices--check her photo above--thinking that it will hurt me without any credentials/criteria worthy a grain of salt, you are mistaken. Anyone will achieve the opposite.....YOU MADE my day!

Not only was it published it in Random Post 7/31/12, http://antigonumcajaneveningpost.blogspot.com/2012/07/random-post.html, forever laughs, but here I present my own words and hers below.
 

Frangipani and Palms! The organic matter, seeds and fronds from the palms, eventually will decapitate the Plumerias, FOOL!

You are nothing but a bigger asshole to keep coming to my blog and leaving rude messages that I will never publish.

I  visit many blogs, too many, once in a while I leave me comments.

Fifty percent of the time, they are compliments, the rest are as in these lines above. But I never say/write anything that I can not justify with a reference, photos, research, practice, credentials and criteria. This banjan garden lady has made my day, believing that I could not take her words with flying colors.

If I declare you are a fool keeping a blog/garden and putting airs without arguments, as in this case, planting a stupid row of palms with Plumerias side by side, it demonstares, that you, islander fashionista jaha, Best South American Blog according to BLOTANICAL,  have never observed seriously how palms grow or what they will look like with time.

Her photo shows a vast lawn area= pollution with gas/oil/diesel/propane, C02, trimmers, blowers and lawnmowers, fumes and noise.

Why would anyjuan in their right mind plant palms with Plumeria pudica (Frangipani pudica in Barbados) as seen in the photo, believing something of great value has been accomplished and proud of the aimless act?  Not to write about that brown streak on the ground: either use of herbicide or trimmed too close to the ground. 

If anyjuan is offended by any comments, mine or those from the people, the least you could do is to question why or what is the criteria for the questioning.  To do what the Barbadian Fashionista has done, just serves as an injection of joy to your humble servant. 

 You be di judge. .

that is that 

 



  





   

INTERVIEW: REFLECTIONS WITH ME TILLEY HAT

THERE are not many blogs with interviews. I know of one by a British female fool with a fushia pink head, that is about it. Here we go with host interviewer Currutaco el Mistico or CEM.

CEM    Thanks for inviting me to your place in the blogosphere, it has been a while, since my last intervention.  Lets get into the nitty gritty, what the hell is a Tilley hat?

AC        The coolest hat, for a cool gardener.  You can find it advertised only in certain magazines.  I remember the faces of two jerks I used to work in the LMM Plantation, when told the cost.  The idiots, forgive me the repetition, could not understand that gardening for me is something I will do until I pass away or can not move any longer, in consequence a hat should be chosen with similar qualities.

CEM      I got it, this hat will last for life, is not it?

AC          Sure. I expect to last two more decades or less. The hat is ten years old, still looking good, with the help of God, we both may reach thirty together, unless hit by lighting.  What is the big deal?  Any good questions?

CEM       I have gotten your drift. Have you humble one,  discovered any designer or blog worthy of merit or anything that I --the reader-- should know about? 

AC           Certainly, another fellow from the Chelsea Flower, by the name Andy Sturgeon, whose installations reminds one of  flattened fish bowls, with lots of concrete, turf and lots of silliness if you ask me. It is like here I am this is my design! Check the definition of his last name, sturgeon:

Any of various large ganoid freshwater and marine fishes of the family Acipenseridae of the Northern Hemisphere, having edible flesh and valued as a source of caviar and isinglass.
 
This may explain a couple of oval fish bowls installations, one inside the other with some pond close by.

The other 'discovery' is a blog again in the former empire of the British persuasion, a gardener that gallops, but not in horses of carriages, but probably antique Triumphs, MG's, or Morris.  His blog has exceptional quality photos, so so writing, not as cool as Hattat in those prairies for half of the year.  I wonder if they really plant anything at all. All the contant travels around gardens in the first case and interesting cities in Europe, not the common places one always hear about.

CM   Wow, have you left anything, are you finished?

AC     The truth is that I rarely have a conversation worthy its salt 
down this neck of the concrete, do not rush me you nimwit!   

CW    Fine. Please go on.

AC     As yours truly was stating, a conversation worthy of my energy and attention here is like the cliched needle in haystack, People can not follow me, or listen to what I say. They are only interested in parroting and sharing their silly, useless and boring lives.  Lets finish now. The tittle has not being discussed in depth.

CEM    Is it necessary?





AC       Yep it is one of my dear props.  While I was disposing of some organic matter in the garden in a roof next door, featured in this space in November 2011, one drop of sweat fell on the water creating ondulating circles as it happens in any quiet liquid surface when any object, in this case liquid hits the surface.  

It felt as if a hammer had hit me.  My reflection ondulating quietly and slowly.

I step down the ladder, got me hats. Took six pictures or so with my humble camera and proceeded.    

CEM     Any memories of Greek mythology, words of wisdom, food for thought or mystical recommendations? 

AC        Bilingual one, nojuan has pulled me leg in such fashion in a while. You must be thinking about Narcisus, not the flower, but the fellow so handsome, falling in love with himself, he fell in some deep pond and drowned. 

Well now that you made such remark,  I declare one thing, even though George Clooney and I could have been twins, If I had been so much in love with my appearance and fell from the ten feet ladder I could  had broken my neck, not drown.   

that is that