The beautiful bougainvillea is a native plant of Spain, and is rampant here with its abundant blossoms of red, fuschia, pink, orange, white, and any mixture of these. I love to imagine a saucy Spaniard, set out to conquer a new world, discover gold, have adventures, exploit native peoples, with his little potted plant to remind him of his mother. The flashy flower is actually a bract of three colored leaves which gently cradle two small white flowers. The red ones are good for coughs, and I have been force-feeding bougainvillea tea to Sascha for his cold.
Also in the picture is the blue agave, which is famous in this region for its role as the key ingredient in tequila!
Every plant here is a new plant to me, to identify, to learn its uses and preferences, and of course to love! What makes this place more beautiful in the minds of people than any other place? Is it because the plants are different? Or greener? Or more flambouyant? My appreciation for beauty grows from comeraderie with land formation and plants and bodies of water. Here there are rocks, huge ones which the soil is perched on, small ones around which the plants are haphazardly stuck, and tiny ones, which the plants grow out of, also known as "dirt". And at the center of this rocky universe is El Mar, the mighty Pacific. It fills our senses incessantly, the salty air we breathe, the humid touch of our skin, the gentle, surprisingly deep, roar of the waves, never stopping, yet never constant enough to create a rhythm. I see the formation of waves when I close my eyes at night, and I feel the water pulling me into the crest. There is no anchor from the influence of the sea.
