CARL LINNAEUS SUCCESS IN GARDENING

A COUPLE of days ago I reviewed a book that some followers of the blog may enjoy.
I decided to present these excerpts for the hell of it. Also for a simple reason, I have
always stressed the need to identify whatever I plant or write about when possible. Some of the names may be/not be pertinent, but if you are into research, find out.
Or get the book: The Brother Gardeners, by Andrea Wulf.

In the summer of 1736, as Peter Collinson was attempting to placate John Bartram, and Philip Miller was working on a new edition of his Dictionary,
a young Swedish botanist thought it necessary to travel from the Netherlands to England to meet all the important gardeners and botanists.
Not yet thirty years old, Carl Linnaeus was already celebrated by botanists in Holland, who he claimed, "sought him as a small oracle".

Such self promotion was a constant feature of Linnaeus's personality. He was conceited and arrogant, calling himself the "prince of botanists" and
insisting that he could achieve more in nine months than the best of his colleagues in several years. The son of a keen gardener, Linnaeus had been fascinated by plants for as long as he could remember, and he liked to tell the story that his love had been installed by his "mother's milk",
for "whenever he cried.... she [his mother] put a flower in his hand, and
he was quiet immediately".

For the past ten months Linnaeus had worked for the wealthy Anglo-Dutch merchant George Clifford, in Hartekamp near Haarlem. As the director of the Dutch East India Company, Clifford had access to the flora from across the world, and his four hothouses held hundreds of plants from southern Europe, Asia and Africa.

In Puerto Rico is impossible to find a garden installation worthy of merit. The last paragraph is significant because in those years, even with the great difficulties of keeping seeds viable, cut stems and plants alive, through long travels by ship, there were hundreds of plants available.
In this pathetic isle in the tropics, I bet dollars to doughnuts, no nursery has more
than thirty if that. When there are thousands! I clarify that plants here equals species.

Success? When I think about all the written words, the vegetation propagated, planted, identified, those that are still alive and those that passed away, a great feeling
of joy flows through the spirit. I may seem arrogant, feel like "small oracle" for the irritation of foes. But will go further...When I was working with the scam artists and environmental criminals of the Luis Munhoz Marin Foundation and Parque Donha Ines, I did in a couple of years, what the incompetent, illiterate fools doing the grounds keeping never did in ten! I propagated hundreds of plants, tens of species
in that shitty hell hole full of thieves, out of my pocket.

After all these times I believe that something here and there, may have been of use to you far away reader, perhaps even a laugh, regarding gardening, landscaping maintenance/installation, environmental, ecological, political, migratory issues, music, movies, books and so forth. I confess that it has been a pleasure, even with the flimsy criticism of one shitty architect who has not built/design a side walk/gutter, Climent, his last name, and the King of the agronomists JERKS: Edwin Gonzalez Bauza.

If we are to "save" the environment, lets do it for us, now. Without water, air, food
and a roof, what kind of life is there?

The reading of this book has helped me to put some things in perspective. My gardening practice, is all I care for. Not necessarily to maintain my bragging rights, but to enjoy the flora/fauna around the house, since outside these boundaries, what is
there, what I have shown in pictures, what I see stinks...

That makes the feeling of success, of sharing it with others more satisfying.Time to go....