THIRTY YEARS OF PLANTING AND PROPAGATING ON AND OFF

I THOUGHT a god idea to go back in time. Times were different, no video games,
no summer camps, computers, cellular phones and else. One had to find entertainment without money, outside help or electronics. There were few options in my case, basketball, baseball, abandoned for the first, table tennis, track and field for
a really short period, pin ball machines, still missed, chess, billiards, reading and listening to music of all kinds except Chinese opera.

THE first three things I attempted to propagate were Cripping fig, a type of Ivy related to the FICUS family not to be confused with Hedera helix. Marihuana or Cannavis sativa and one still on the top ten Bauhinia, these two from seeds.

Later, Alocasias, Diffenbachias, Bucera busaris and Hibiscus were part of a small botanical family, that as told before, was totally destroyed by either my sister or those who rented the house. From those days as a begginer collector, only the Bucera is still standing, at sixty/eighty feet in the backyard in our former house in Savarona, close by the baseball stadium.

Savarona, the vecinity of my growth, is on Youtube, if interested. The name has obscure origins. All I know is that it appears in the near east. If you decide to check
the videos from one of my first contacts in this blogosphere, Amilcar Garcia, of
elartedesaparecer.blogspot.com, who in real life has disapeared, I warn you. The architecture may be similar, but not the people. Puerto Rico's nationals are the minority in those streets that I loved then, and know remember with certain sadness.
NOW the music, the melodic speech patterns belong to fellow islanders from the
Caribbean, that fortunately have populated many areas in Puerto Rico and USA, that
otherwise would be just dust and tumbleweed.

To end this nostalgic unpleasant memories, somehow... I invite all those who venture
into this cave, as the ecocriminal Gonzalez Bauza, defines it, to research the origins of: Marihuana, Cocaine and Heroin. From a botanical perspective is great to find out
how, why, when. From the socially uses of them all, I was fortunate to a taste in my old days as a freedom fighter in the USA Army, while stationed in Germany.

As with alcohol and cigarettes, I do not understand the inability of great segments
of the population all over the world to use them with responsibility. The crime associated with the manufacturing, distribution, packing and selling could certainly
be eliminated with making it legal and monopolizing all the process mentioned. Only
the state could end the futile deaths to control the market, and the silly wasteful historical attempts to eliminate/reduce its use.

For a future post, I am thinking about the origins of globalization...Sugar cane, was
perhaps the first successful attempt to go global with slaves and such.....tobbaco, potatoes, coffee, rubber, and so on.....Destroying the environment for profits.....