EARLY AND LATE BOTANICAL MEMORIES

  T he earliest and more distant is the still  impressive, 54 years later, Antigonon leptopus, growing in the horrendous cyclone fence of the Luis Munhoz Rivera, elementary school in Caguas City.  Mothers and grandmothers kept Pothos in glass jars inside their houses. Diffenbachias and , Hibiscus in their mostly compacted soil or cement, recycled cracker tin cans pots in cities and country side.

Ninety five percent of my life has taken place in urban contexts in the colony or the metropolis. The five left, was rather brief and intense in Aguas Buenas City, during a couple of summers 1959/60.

I spent the time between my maternal aunt, Marta,  and Generoso, my  grandfather and farmer, in Mulitas and Juan Ascencio distant vicinities with unpaved yellow/red compacted and slippery clay. 


I still remember Generoso over sixty years old, weeding his plantation of Alocasia Macrorizia and Oryza sativa, one early morning when the sun was still  somewhat shy.  The peculiar sound of the rice stalks against the Alocasia leaves waving against the wind never left me thoughts.


My relatives, both,  lived in houses without electricity or water, with the mandatory outhouses.  It is rather odd that half a century later, half the world still lives like that, with many, close by, and no outhouses like Haiti.  But this is no sociological report. Back to the studio.


F ast forward to 1968/69.  Those were the years if I remember correctly that I propagated anything in my life.  Cannavis sativa and Bauhinia monandra from seeds and Ficus pumila from a stem.

To close this post, Generoso with a first or second grade of school was an avid reader and very opened minded.  One of our last conversations dealt with Cannavis cultivation in Puerto Rico in those years. 

To my surprise and my mother's discomfort, he told us very casually that he new many farmers who got rich with the planting and selling. 

My views on gardening, horticulture and the environment have been forged with lots of anger and pain.  I witnessed the destruction of Puerto Rico. I grew up between that world that I do not see with any romanticism, the agricultural, turned into a concrete plastered cage, noisy, hot, maze, hell of highways and roads poorly designed, with no maintenance, vertical/horizontal houses and buildings without ANY aesthetic, scale and proportion considerations in the San Juan Metro Area and the rest of the island. 

Puerto Rico has been plastered with concrete/asphalt, left and right, malls, 
fast food joints, gas stations with the complicity of politicians, bankers, lawyers, architects, engineers and politicians, it has been like watching vultures, any of your preference, ripping off the island and its resources and beauty, for profit and avarice.

In consequence, my views on gardening and the surrounding people are atypical, always within this context.  Not just complacency with the pretty pictures and the self.   Just flora/fauna, some aesthetics, collecting, and propagating, without pollution or noise.

that is that.

If you like this or did not
check my trajectory:

endemismotrasnochado.blogspot.com

puertorrikenhadasinmostaza

and last not least

antigonum cajan

eveningpost.blogspot.com