SAYING GOODBYE TO THE JONES: NO SURRENDER!

The Grandma & The Broom, Sant Boi de Llobregat

After buying a new house in Zarautz for The Jones, The Grandma is thinking about her own future again. Last Saturday, when she was in Sant Boi with her families, she remembered her childhood. Sant Boi was an important place for her when she was a child, first, and a teenager, later. She spent the most unforgettable moments of her life in this city with many loved friends. 

It was when she was arriving to her appointment with her families that she crossed a beautiful little forest full of broom and, suddenly, all the memories returned like if all of them were the real life. She remembers Marianao Park, the Montbaig range, Sant Ramon Mountain, the Ateneu, the almond trees, the cherry trees, the rosemary, the carob trees, the lignum trees...

Now say: "The broom tree blooms,

everywhere the fields are red with poppies.

With new scythes we'll thresh

the ripened wheat and weeds."

The Grandma has considered these memories as a message. She must continue her searching of happiness and she has decided to search Corto Maltese, the man who stole her heart some decades ago and one day disappeared in Stonehenge. The Grandma hasn't got news since that moment and although she has never stopped the searching, she thinks that perhaps she was taking a wrong path. If Corto Maltese was born in Malta, perhaps she must start to search in this Mediterranean island. This is the reason because of The Grandma is going to travel to Malta to find her old friend.

Ah, young lips parting after dark, 

if you only knew how dawn 

delayed us, how long we had to wait 

for light to rise in the gloom!

The Jones are going to continue with their lifes. The Grandma is totally sure that they are going to be happy, find good jobs and enjoy their new families without forgetting this one, because, whatever happens, they will be always a Jones and they are predestined to write great pages in our history.

Good Luck, Dear Jones and No Surrender!

The Grandma & The Broom, Sant Boi de Llobregat

The broom is considered the national plant in Catalonia because two of its most important poets have written about it: Joan Maragall and Salvador Espriu. These poems are considered vital messages of hope about future, resistance about difficulties, faith in changes and the deep desire of surviving as a culture. To sum up, broom is a symbol of no surrender.

Genisteae is a tribe of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants in the subfamily Faboideae of the legume family Fabaceae. It includes a number of well-known plants including broom, lupine (lupin), gorse and laburnum.

The tribe's greatest diversity is in the Mediterranean, and most genera are native to Europe, Africa, the Canary Islands, India and southwest Asia. However, the largest genus, Lupinus, is most diverse in North and South America. Anarthrophytum and Sellocharis are also South American and Aryrolobium ranges into India.

But we have lived to save your words, 

to return you the name of every thing, 

so that you'd stay on the straight path 

that leads to the mastery of earth.

The Genisteae arose 32.3 ± 2.9 million years ago in the Oligocene. The members of this tribe consistently form a monophyletic clade in molecular phylogenetic analyses. The tribe does not currently have a node-based definition, but several morphological synapomorphies have been identified.

The Grandma and The Fennel, Sant Boi de Llobregat

Brooms tolerate, and often thrive best in, poor soils and growing conditions. 

In cultivation they need little care, though they need good drainage and perform poorly on wet soils. 

They are widely used as ornamental landscape plants and also for wasteland reclamation, e.g. mine tailings, and sand dune stabilising. Many of the most popular brooms in gardens are hybrids, notably Kew broom and Warminster broom.

We looked beyond the desert, 

plumbed the depth of our dreams, 

turned dry cisterns into peaks 

scaled by the long steps of time.

The Plantagenet kings used common broom, known as planta genista in Latin, as an emblem and took their name from it. It was originally the emblem of Geoffrey of Anjou, father of Henry II of England. Wild broom is still common in dry habitats around Anjou, France.

Charles V and his son Charles VI of France used the pod of the broom plant, broom-cod, or cosse de geneste, as an emblem for livery collars and badges.

The flower buds and flowers of Cytisus scoparius have been used as a salad ingredient, raw or pickled, and were a popular ingredient for salmagundi or grand sallet during the 17th and 18th century. There are now concerns about the toxicity of broom, with potential effects on the heart and problems during pregnancy.

Now say: "We hear the voices 

of the wind on the high sea of crested grain." 

Now say: "We shall be ever faithful 

to the people of this land." - Salvador Espriu

We made a promise we swore we'd always remember:
No retreat, baby, no surrender.

Bruce Springsteen