Barcelona Photoblog

October 19, 2007

Pumpkin Under The Sun

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Halloween is here and common things start to look spooky in the dark. Shadows are longer, the autumn withers leaves and tints our dusks with yellow and red hues. Everything around us acquires strange forms that remind us of those monsters we used to imagine hidden somewhere in the back of our minds, or worse somewhere inside the closet, the open window, under the stairs, the bed, the kitchen. What looks like a harmless pumpkin may suddenly turn out to be a dwarf fishing with his rod, who knows, and who cares as long as we see things in means we are alive. Let the magic begin!

October 18, 2007

Bougainvillea

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Walking along the beach at Sant Pol de Mar near Barcelona I spotted these beautiful bougainvilleas hanging from a white balcony right in front of the sea. Don't forget to check my previous posts about flowers.

October 17, 2007

Corn Cobs: An Ackward Design by Mother Nature

Corn Cobs: An Ackward Design by Mother Nature [enlarge]

Feeding human kind from time immemorial, corn or maize, from Spanish maĆ­z, is the largest crop in all of the Americas. Ears are female inflorescences. The tufts of hair are stigmas known as silks. Young ears are edible even if raw but once the cob grows in the summer it becomes tougher and the silk dries so you innevitably have to cook it before it dries. Maize is used as a biomass fuel, such as ethanol, to reduce fuel costs. Such practice has caused an increase in food costs and results in extremely profitable crops for farmers who obviously reject other products. The use of hybrids has grown substantially and big extensions of forest soil have been cleared up for the sake of money at all cost. Little by little, who knows, we will have "greener" cars on an emptier stomach. Talking about green and ecology, Mr. Al Gore, the Nobel peace laureate, received the prestigious Prince of Asturias award in the northern Spanish city of Oviedo.

Links to the kind fellow bloggers that have tagged me recently: Budapest Daily Photo by Zsolt, Flagstaff Daily Photo and this one goes to Sydney Daily Photo by Sally for all I owe to her :)

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