How to Spend Your Vacations in Barcelona?

By Robert M Freeman

Barcelona is a place that is unlike any other in Spain, and for that reason in all of Europe. Spending holidays in Barcelona would leave you with a very revitalizing experience. It offers a change from the usual pace of your life to a change that is absolutely wonderful. Barcelona is exceptionally beautiful and offers a lot of enjoyment. You would experience as if the city comes to life at night-time.

In Barcelona, you'll be able to find fine examples of both Gothic and Romanesque architecture. The most unifying theme of the city of Barcelona is Antoni Gaudi which has a very capricious architecture. If you wish to indulge into the true spirit of Barcelona, try to walk by La Rambla which is a splendid street lined with trees. Throughout your stroll, you could also revisit the history and traditions for which Barcelona is so famous.

You'll find a lot of different things on your way from books and jewellery to a large number of tourists and street performers. The street life is very vibrant and the atmosphere is very pleasant.

There are also paved streets in the Barri Gotic and there are medieval buildings, and the entire area shows an exotic feeling. The area also has a lot of restaurants that are very fine, and the food offered is of very high quality and delicious. Barcelona, is the city in which Picasso spent his youth is home of the Picasso Museum. For those who are Picasso admirers, there are his early works in the museum which provide a true understanding to his works and also to the artist himself.

There is also Edifici Frum which holds an exhibition of the urban transformation that took place in Barcelona. The highlight in the place is a model of the city which is very detailed, and its creation took twenty thousand hours. It is acclaimed as the biggest model of its kind in all of Europe.

Bellesguard is a sight that should not be missed, and is constructed in a Gaudi fashion. The uncovered bricks and wrought iron give it a fairy tale look. You should also see the Casa de l'Ardiaca where there are many of the city's collections. Its yard is merely peaceful, and was refurbished in the year 1902. It was in fact built in the sixteenth century.

There is also the very interesting House of spikes, Casa de les Punxes that is like a neo Gothic fantasy. It has turrets that are pointed and that has it nicknamed as the House of Spikes. There is also the Edifici de Gas Natural which is a waterfront tower, and has shimmering mirror like surface.

If you want to see more of Gothic architecture, you should go to Catedral which is famous for its gothic interior that is very powerful. It also has an irregular cloister that is Romanesque. Centre de Cultura Contempornia de Barcelona is adored by the people of the city and holds different exhibitions, and is a centre that is used for multi cultural purposes. - 15266

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Soy Bean

By Amy Paul

Licorice grows wild in southern Europe, the Middle East, Asia Minor and Afghanistan, and is raised commercially in the former USSR, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany and elsewhere.

From then on, however, its spread was rapid and nowadays it is the most widely grown of all leguminous plants, being raised over huge areas of arable land. The seeds contain a great deal of protein (40%), similar in composition to that of meat, and are thus a very nutritious food.

The seeds yield an oil used in pastry making and liqueurs promoting digestion, and are used by the pharmaceutical industry in the preparation of gargles.

In the Middle Ages fennel had all sorts of uses. The fruits were used to flavour sweets, fish sauces and soups. It was recommended for the treatment of cataracts, worms in the cars, and to promote the flow of milk from the breast. The following recipe is for 'cold brewit': 'take mush made from almonds, dry it on a cloth and when dry put it in a vessel; to this add salt, sugar, the white powder of ginger and juice from fennel.

Cultivated forms differ in the colour of their seeds. In regions where soy bean is grown on a large scale the proteins arc extracted from the beans and made up into various kinds of synthetic meat products.

The seeds do not ripen at the same time; a single plant carries them at various stages of development. For this reason they arc harvested in succession by cutting out only the ripe sections of the umbels. These ;Ire then spread out and dried slowly on large sheets of canvas to retain the seeds, which separate readily from the stalks. The temperature must not exceed 35C (95F) - 15266

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Planting screens the boundaries and focuses the eye on the feature at the end of the herb garden.

Tips on Garden Design

By Jason Flinstone

An assessment of the garden in history, however brief, cannot ignore the pervasive influence of oriental garden design. Gardening was a craft in China in ancient times and it crossed the sea to Japan in the seventh century All to develop into a distinctive style of its own, which continues basically unchanged to this clay.

At the other extreme there was also the tradition of the cottager's garden, used for growing vegetables and for keeping a pig and a few chickens. Today the situation is very different: the twentieth century has brought increased leisure, while gardens have become smaller and available to many more people. The interest in gardening continues to grow but is, nevertheless, only one of many demands on our leisure time. It is therefore important that a garden is well designed from the outset, with the owner's requirements taken into consideration, so that it can be safely left to mature in the way it was planned without needing constant attention.

In this context it is often easier to define style in a negative way: concrete slabs, for instance, lack the subtlety and texture needed for paving a cottage garden, and asbestos pots would he out of character in the garden of a traditional brick house.

A good garden plan not only demonstrate the enormous range of needs and activities which can be catered for within such a limited space, they also show how a design based on individual needs will transform the same basic plot into a unique, well planned garden.

All materials, to a degree, dictate how they should be used. In planning your garden try above all to avoid mixing materials and styles as it is rarely successful. Plants too have very definite characteristics and the selection of them will certainly influence the overall look of the garden. But the choice of materials must come first when establishing the layout and basic style. With a small garden, he aware of the limitations of your plot. The challenge is to achieve the desired effect within narrow boundaries, always hearing in mind that a visual link between the house and the garden is of great importance.

Once the fundamental style of you: garden has emerged, from a consideration of building materials and the interior look of your house, from then on each individual's garden is unique. Its character grows partly out of practical solutions to practical problems and relates also to the specific functions the garden is expected to perform. At a later stage planting will course flesh out the bones of your garden and give it finally a very particular feel. - 15266

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Garden herbs has many benefits to your health as well as adding flavors to your cooking.

Grape Vine

By John Piano

The first vintners were probably the ancient Armenians, who fermented the fruit of the wild grape vine way back in the early Stone Age (between the tenth and eighth millennium B.C.).

In Europe it was the Greeks who first cultivated the grape and introduced it in the 7th century B.C. to Italy and the territory that is now France. Its cultivation in America dates from the 16th century A.D.

Nowadays, it is raised not only in Mexico but elsewhere, chiefly in Madagascar, for it can be pollinated by artificial means. It is propagated by cuttings and trained up artificial supports or small trees. It begins to bear fruits in the third year. These are 16-to 30-cm-(6- to 12-in-) long pod ;like capsules (known as vanilla pods) which are harvested while still immature so they do not burst.

First of all they are scalded briefly with hot water and then submitted to the lengthy process of wilting and drying, during which they turn a dark colour and acquire their characteristic aroma. Good quality vanilla is supple and small crystals of fragrant vanillin are visible on the surface. Vanilla must be stored in an air-tight wrapper or container to preserve its aroma.

In England ginger has been a traditional spice since the 9th century, but Europeans were not acquainted with the plant itself until the late 13th century when it was described at almost the same time by both Marco Polo and Pagolotti. In the 16th century Francisco de Mendoza of Spain began cultivating ginger in Jamaica. Chief producers nowadays are Jamaica, southeast India, tropical west Africa and China.

Ginger is propagated by vegetative means, by cutting the rootstock into pieces and planting these out in light and moisture-retaining soil. It is harvested (ploughed up) 6 to 12 months later - 15266

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You can grow various range of vegetables and herbs can be grown in garden beds.

Purslane

By Matthew Cook

This is a climbing perennial plant native to the islands of Java, Sumatra and Borneo. It is grown on trees which shade plantations of other plants from the tropical sun. Of all the peppers used in cookery this is the most aromatic, which accounts, perhaps, for its lack of popularity in Europe.

In the Middle Ages it was a very popular plant in Europe, particularly in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. Its uses are many. The fleshy leaves may be cooked and eaten like spinach. In France it is used to make an excellent, vitamin-rich, green salad and in the Middle East it is a common ingredient of mixed salads called lattoush'.

According to old English recipes the leaves may be pickled like capers. They may be used as a delicate flavouring in creamed vegetable soups and in piquant mayonnaises served with meat and fish. When using purslane in cooked foods the finely chopped leaves should be added at the end of cooking to retain their delicate flavour and precious vitamins.

Besides being far more pungent, pepper cubeb is also morphologically different from black pepper and long pepper. Though the fruits (berries) resemble those of black pepper they appear to have long stalks (these stalks arc actually elongated ovaries). They are harvested before they ripen so that the surface becomes wrinkled during the drying process.

The strong biting quality of cubeb is not caused by piperine, as in black pepper, but by cubebine and by the large amount of essential oil they contain (as much as 12% whereas black pepper contains 4% at the most).

For this reason it is recommended to buy peppers whole, not ground, and to grind them just before use. - 15266

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Having knowledge about herbs gardening is necessary to manage a healthy and thriving herb garden.

Tips on Garden Drainage System

By Scott Edward

If you have taken over a new site and form of drainage is definitely needed, will at least provide an excellent opportunity to get rid of any builder's which you have inherited. Broken lumps of concrete should be used the bottom of drainage pits or trenches. The drainage systems is also useful to take the iorterflow and occasional outlet from a small garden pond.

It is important for a gardener to know about the water table. This is the under the topsoil or subsoil, depend on the depth of these layers, to w water standing in the earth's crust rises. is not a horizontal line but confo roughly to the contours of the ground.

The water table generally rises and fa following wet and dry periods. If it star, at about 900 mm (3 ft) below ground le-. it can he an asset, since water will - available to the deeper plant roots. Ho ever extreme fluctuations in the water tai are a great danger: if it rises in winter: roots of plants are killed through saturatic and if it falls in the summer the pla suffer from drought. On low-lying grout if there is perpetual standing water (usua in winter), this might mean that the war table has risen above ground level and drainage system will relieve it.

Compost can be regarded as sufficiently decayed when the individual components can no longer be distinguished. It should be a crumbly, manure-like mass, dark in colour; if the texture is slimy the heap has not been made up correctly. In warm weather, and given the right conditions, the waste will take only about two to three months to decay but in winter you can expect it to take about four to six months. Artificial or inorganic fertilizers are concentrated chemical salts from natural underground deposits. They are available in liquid or powder form and supply essential foods direct to the plants, acting quickly when applied to moist soils; it is important to use the exact quantity stated and to distribute it as evenly as possible, as overdoses can be harmful. Fertilizers are available containing individual chemi- cals or you can buy a general one which combines the three main nutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K).

This channel should obviously run to some form of outlet such as a soakawayon no account allow your excess water to drain on to neighbours' property. The disadvantage of a rubble drain is that it becomes blocked comparatively quickly as soil leaches through from above.

If you have space, a double compost bin allows one heap to decompose thoroughly while another is being started. - 15266

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Good garden drainage system is important in garden planning to have a thriving garden.

Alpenrose

By Mark Carlson

The white dogwood is a widespreading, sparsely branched shrub with drooping twigs, growing to a height of 2-3 m. The twigs are bright red, in more heavily shaded locations yellow. The buds resemble those of the red dogwood, but are somewhat larger. The white flowers appear in May and June, the fruits ripen in September. The hard seed is flattened, ovate.

This shrub is a native of eastern Europe and Siberia, its range extending eastward to northern China and Korea. In this arm it grows mainly in the valleys of large rivers, where it can be one of the main species in the shrub layer of riverine woods. In central and western Europe it is planted in parks as a shrub beneath groups of trees.

Both the red twigs and white fruits are very ornamental. A completely frost-resistant species, it tolerates shade and the smoke-laden atmosphere of large cities. Propagation is by suckers and cuttings. Also planted in parks is the closely related species Cornus stoloniferaMichx. (C. sericea. L.) of America, which is readily propagated by means of the drooping branches which take root easily. This dogwood has white flowers and small, round, white drupes containing a single, hard, ribbed seed.

The common privet is an upright, densely branched shrub 1-4 m high. One-year shoots are erect, arching and grey. The brown, ovate buds are often suboppositc and are borne on prominent peg-like projections. The white flowers appear in June. The fruits ripen in September and remain on the shrub until late in winter.

This is a warmth-loving species growing mostly in southern Europe and Asia Minor. In central Europe it exists as a relic of the warm period following the Ice Age, growing in warm, mainly limestone situations. It occurs on sunny and rocky banks or in oak stands. It thrives quite well in dry locations but requires lighter soil rich in humus.

Propagation is by means of seeds and root cuttings. The leaves turn a bright red in autumn. The wood is hard and reddish. - 15266

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In garden planning, where the garden roof is strong enough to support the weight of topsoil and underlying drainage, the sight of a lawn outside the living room in a modern apartment can be very striking.