GARDENING RUMINATIONS

SOME character somewhere described this blog as boring. I added to his observation, that is also poorly written. I do not mind criticism of that kind, since I certainly despise
without much humility people concerned about surface, cosmetic issues. Happiness for your humble servant is a word, concept or idea when finishing reading.

Tito Collazo, the graphic artist with whom I have worked in a couple of projects, pruning, leveling his front yard, the photos for our calendar has a neighbor, Farrukito.
This character dresses, gestures and speaks like a pimp without the fur, since we are
in the tropics.

In Farrukito's rented apartment yard, there is a twenty feet tall, Cocos nucifera, growing exactly against the concrete fence separating the properties. In consequence, some coconuts fall in Tito's back yard, but so do the fronds.

I bet many readers from cold, template climates have never tasted the water or the soft/hard insides of this fruit. Or people from hot climates. I confess that I am not
so crazy about them, have never bought one while hanging by the beach, will not bother to peel one, a hard, difficult task. But some people think coconuts are so great and cool. It seems that mixing it with whiskey is palatable and fashionable in some
circles.

The fronds are twenty feet long, at least. Flat on the ground, they remind me of
a huge fish skeleton. They take a lot of room, are difficult to handle. Fronds may have some uses, as the coconut skins, but in Puerto Rico , people just throw them in the sidewalk, where they hang for a week, or months until the garbage men take them home to the city dumpster.

If I had a neighbor with such nuisance, believe me there would be no palm tree making my life miserable. Palms are fine, but not in ANY urban context. Unless one
happens to live in the Canary Islands and those hot places in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, in this isle, a pandemic of 'ornamental' palms have spread all over for the last ten years. PEOPLE in the 'Green Industry", landscaping maintenance and installing, with their accomplices in the grass/palms
nurseries/farms have inundated the whole island. It is visual contamination, as ugly
as those spaces with billboards in every square, period.

Not only that. The palm tree fans, landscape scumbags, forget that many species are intolerant of salty breezes. If you follow this blog, and I ask, where do you think thousands of palms have been planted? Exactly fifty/hundred meters from the sea shore. The leaves
look burned soon afterwards, but it does not matter since the landscape people got
their money, and in Puerto Rico there are no arborists working in the government.
Nor is there the intellectual, human, ecological interest necessary to plan a systematic maintenance program.

The problem is relevant. Palms/grass create too much organic waste, hard to handle. In Guaynabo City, organic waste is 22% of the total in the city dump. Most of it
is grass clippings not composted by residents or people in the industry.

By now you have the correct impression, I am against the use of any palm tree in urban landscape installations. Too many of them. Even well known Raymond Jungles, from Florida, a disciple of the great late Roberto Burle Marx, abuses the damn palms in installations that would be perfect, except for that aberrant infatuation. Time to go.