green thumb

One afternoon a few months ago, I was harvesting okra from my garden. My two elder sisters were there at that time and I suggested that stir-fried veggies with okra sounds delicious. I gave a handful to Nang Lita to take home. She took it and was about to pass it to Tita (my other sister) so she could put it in the basket when they saw a brown hairy worm inching along on one of them (okra) and they screamed! Both of them. And guess what happened to the okras. Well, you guessed it right. They flew! and I was laughing so hard, my tummy hurt.

I wasn't born unafraid of those crawly things. I mean, who loves them? But as one becomes a green thumb, worms aren't scary anymore.

Let's talk about true-blue green thumbs. My paternal grandfather was a great farmer. My father loved his garden so much, he went there after office hours, whenever possible. My uncle, a more seasoned farmer, never ran out of root crops and corn and rice. I remember having hearty snack of sweet potatoes and thick hot chocolate every afternoon on their kitchen table - well, almost. Sometimes, there's boiled or fried ripe bananas. You may say, farming or gardening runs in the family, which is true in my uncle's. But I don't see anyone else following my father's passion in his. There's only me and I knew it then when one morning many years ago, my auntie was harvesting peanuts and I offered to help, not really because I was a good hardworking girl who loves to lend a hand but mainly because the thrill of pulling up the plants and counting as each gorgeous peanut is plucked from the roots, was so exciting! When we finished harvesting, my aunt gave me a bucketful. Almost immediately, I run home and cooked my peanuts (boiled unshelled and salted). The next day, I fried the beans. And the next and next. I still had two cups of raw peanuts left and I decided to sow them. I asked my father if I could have a plot for my peanuts in his garden. Of course, he said yes. After a couple of months, their yellow tiny flowers dotted the lower portion of the plants. Then it was time to harvest. I was thrilled to see peanuts dangling from the roots as I pulled each plant up. The biggest and most vigorous had 62! And to think I only sowed two beans per hill, my calculating mind went to work: 62 peanuts / 2 = 31 peanuts! Imagine, each peanut is multiplied 31 times! I showed Papa my calculation and he said, that's wrong. It couldn't be wrong! I insisted. No, he said. Look, each of this peanut has two beans inside, so 1 bean is 1/2 of 1 peanut. So, your calculation should be: 1/2 peanut x 2 beans = 1 peanut and 1 peanut x 62 equals? Sixty-two! I answered. I must have looked so ridiculously animated that he laughed. Although proven wrong, it even excited me more. And I said to Papa, that's so much more than what you'll earn from bank deposit. He just smiled at me. Of course, a kid aged 10 didn't know about cost of labor and materials. What she just saw was the gross and the bliss of tasting the fruit of her labor. That was then the start of my love affair with gardening.

There seems to be no limit to a gardener's capacity

to forget where they've left something

-Des Kennedy, THIS RAMBLING AFFAIR

1998, Sasquatch Books, Seattle

The sun appeared above the wooded hill early and bright, with a promise of a beautiful day ahead which it didn't keep. I'd happily welcome yet another sunny day because it would mean uninterrupted work in the garden, but the weather turned nasty in the early afternoon. As the gray clouds turned dark, I hastily gathered all the garden tools except one: the pitchfork. I was sure I left it under a tree - but which tree? I ran from tree to tree with no luck. No pitchfork.

The rain started with no introduction. No drizzle...just pure downpour of steady and heavy raindrops. I hurried to the nipa nut and almost fell down. My foot tripped on something hard and steely. And there, on the floor, was my pitchfork. Soaking wet, and angry, I kicked hard at it, and missed, I swear I could almost hear it laughing. My mood that afternoon turned dark as the sky.

I don't usually get angry just because I can't remember where i left something. The word annoyed is more appropriate. Annoyed because instead of using the time for weeding or spading, I'll be roaming around the garden looking for it. While at it, the idea of painting the handles of all my garden tools yellow comes back to mind, but soon forgotten until the next time it happens again.

This bout of short term amnesia must be epidemic. My neighbor, also a gardener like me, often asked if I have borrowed this or that tool. Most of the time I can't even be sure if I did so I'll be looking around the house. If I can't find it, it doesn't mean I didn't. Maybe I just don't remember where I left it. If he can't remember who borrowed it or in fact, nobody did and that he just don't remember where he left it, then definitely I'm not alone suffering from short term amnesia.

I haven't really thought about this dilemma until now. Why do gardeners often forget where they left their tools? What causes them to forget? I was attending a seminar on organic farming with some friends when I asked those questions. A friend has this opinion: A gardener has too many plans for his garden and too little time to do them all. Agreed! Another friend said: A garden tool, especially an old rake, looks like a bean pole and has the color of soil so that it is camouflaged with the surroundings. And I said maybe because our focus is not on the tools. They're on what they're used for and that is, to grow beautiful and heathy plants, to which my neighbor countered: Come on! Why don't you just accept the fact that forgetting is one thing old people are good at. And I said: Oh, yes! That, too.

gift of friendship

Here we are, living in a world so different from the one we used know a few decades ago. What used to be the in thing then is now history. Remember those days when communicating meant writing letters on paper, and that you have to buy postage stamps at the post office to send them? Just thinking about that tedious process makes you winch. Now, mails, or rather emails are sent as easy and as fast as your internet connection can muster in a matter of seconds. Paying monthly bills used to be as tedious too. Imagine those days when you have to be physically there, falling in line with all those people in a long snaking queue. But now, thanks to internet technology, the farthest trip is from where you are to the computer table. It's quite amazing actually, that people have the capacity to adapt and embrace technology as a natural course of modern life.

I could write a few more examples of changes that we all are aware of, but that would be deviating from my main topic. The reason why I chose to write about changes in the first paragraph is to compare them to things that don't.

Love, in all forms, and directed to different people in our lives, didn't and won't change. Though technology has changed how we communicate with each other, basically, it's just the same old Love – that same feeling of warmth and affection that our grandparents and great-grandparents had given and received. Finding love still brings happiness and losing it still brings sadness as it did before.

To have a friend to love, confide and enjoy a moment with, a need which is as old as the sea, won't change. A friend is a gift you give to yourself – the one that needs no elaborate wrapping ... just in its true form and color. Once you acknowledge that gift, you move, not to a necessarily higher level but rather to a unique one. You'll learn to appreciate yourself more - in your capacity to be thoughtful, kind and generous. You will also discover the ability to make people smile or laugh at jokes and at life with all its complexities and random absurdness. And more importantly, that gift makes you want to be a better person.

FRIENDS

Last two weeks was hectic. We were expecting some guests and as usual, we were so busy doing the preparation – general cleaning, planning the recipes and all those things that go with it. My sisters especially - they woke up early and slept late. I was wondering why all the fuss for a two-day fiesta celebration? I mean, it happens every year! Nothing new about it. But this year's celebration was different, I was told. Linda and Walding are coming. In case you're wondering, they're my sisters' best friends. They went to the same school, lived in the same apartment, ate the same food, et cetera. The last year (or was it last two?) I was in highschool then and got to know them for quite a while. Being the youngest of the roommates, I was not on their level of thinking and being of different “breed” (not really the right word,I know but I'd change that if the right word comes along), I stayed at the background and whether or not they knew it, they were my idols. You see, unlike the other occupants of the adjacent apartment who often times had differences and tiffs, they seemed to have no problems at all, living together. I remember them as friends in the real sense of the word.

I confess that I was a bit apprehensive. You see, there were times when somebody I was working with or was at one time or another my roommate or classmate, would just greet me and call me by name and I had no idea who he or she is. Or if I do remember because we were friends once upon a time, there's just nothing to talk about anymore. So there was this fear that I might not be a good company. While I could do some weather-talk, it's just not enough to hold a conversation. Small talk is boring and embarrassing.

As it turned out, Linda and Walding haven't changed that much. Sure they've grown into matured and fine ladies, and well- traveled at that, but otherwise, they are just being as they were as I knew them 45 years ago: fun to be with.

And we didn't even talk about the weather.

SAVED BY THE BELL

When i was still studying at PSID in Makati, there were a lot design projects to do. I remember hurrying to the classroom, carrying a T-square on one hand and on the other, a bag full of triangles, pencils, watercolors, oil pastels,  brushes and a rigid envelop containing all of the design plates that our instructors so love to assign us. Weeknights were spent making perspective drawings from floor plans complete with color renderings. It took a lot of effort to make just one plate. Imagine making three in one week! It's ironic though that I still think it was the best episode of my life.I enjoyed the challenge of making the plates, especially on subjects like Color Rendering, Freehand and Perspective Drawings. Architectural and Art History was quite boring but there was one subject that really made me anxious: Interior Design I. Our instructor was very critical. His verbal assaults can be discouraging. My first plate was, according to him, capricious. I didn't know exactly what he meant, but by the way he said it, I knew it was not a compliment. When he returned our plates, I stared at the red marking he mercilessly scribbled on my plate: 2.5 - barely passing the prelim. It was the only subject that marred my report card. I hated him that moment.

During the finals, he made us design our own ideal private spaces. A place of well-being, he called it. Most of my classmates had such grandiose ideas but I opted to be honest about it. So I designed my ideal bedroom. We were required to explain in writing why we think it is our place of well-being. Then came the time to submit our plates. My anxiety grew as our instructor mounted our plates on the wall. There were so many drawings, good and bad, of log cabins, mountain resorts and beach houses. Mine looked pathetic compared to the others. A bedroom! To make matters worse, he called each one to read what he wrote while our instructor holds the student's plate for us to see. We had a few laughs but most of the time we were silent. When it was my time to stand in front and read, the bell rang, My friend Ellie whispered to me: You're saved by the bell. I smiled at her and said: So are you. And we both laughed. Her plate was mounted next to mine.

The following week, we had our grades. Most of my final grades from other subjects were either one point less or more than midterm, but to my surprise and relief, my Interior Design I grade of 2.5 became 1.4 -  quite a big leap, if I might add. My only regret though is that of not knowing why. If I wasn't saved by the bell, would I have listened to a compliment instead?

THE TROUBLE WITH GARDENING

There's just too much work to do in the garden, and thinking about it makes you want to quit sometimes. But then, little by little, a 20 meter plot is almost ready for planting after many days of hard work. There's so much investment there: time, labor (yours, and a hired hand) and yes, love! and you just can't leave it bare.

While this may sound like you're making a mountain out of a molehill to those who haven't tried it, I'm sure many gardeners would agree. I mean, only gardeners experience the frustrations in this line of work - frustrations like weeds, pests, too much rain ( or lack of it), sweltering heat and just like what we had a few days ago, stormy weather. And in your frustrated mind you asked questions like why do weeds grow faster than your pampered broccoli? Why of all the plants and weeds and grass and shrubs that grow in abundance nearby, pests choose to nibble on young leaves of your squash? Why can't a weather be good all the time? Why can't it stop raining? Why do typhoons come when the corn is in its most vulnerable?

But then, like everything else, these problems end, one by one. The weather becomes favorable, the pests find the maturing leaves too hard and brittle for their liking and weeds succumbed to constant assault. The compost that you put in your plot just started to take effect and your veggies growing just fine. That's when you find yourself humming a tune while pottering around the garden. You see the first huge yellow flower of squash and to you, it seems like a child's brilliant smile and you smile back! Frustrations? What frustrations? Hah!

The first sign of success perks you up so you made plans last night. Still you can't decide which vegetable to plant next to the bunching onions. Tomatoes? Snap beans? Peanuts? Radish? Melon? A bit of a problem as you can see when you have too many choices. Of course, it won't be too difficult to decide if you didn't buy all those packets of all those seeds!

You wake up earlier nowadays - too early a few times so you impatiently sit on the doorstep, waiting for the sun to show up. Even then, your impatience is rewarded (as if you deserve it). Just before the sun appears above the horizon, the colors of the spectrum tinting the sky greets you. As you walk through a thinning fog and open the garden gate, the waft of dew- laden grass awakens the senses.

The thought of quitting disintegrates.

And that's the other trouble of gardening. You just can't quit.

Island Fever

 

 

The sandbar at Puntod Island of Panglao forms a letter C during low tide.  It's one of my favorite places in Bohol. You can see the Balicasag Island from here.

This is Puntod Island silhouetted against the horizon.  We were about a kilometer away from the island when I took this shot.

The boat we rented during our island hopping.

The day started and ended beautifully...with little mishaps and serendipity along the way. . .

On the way to Panglao Island via Causeway and Tagbilaran Fishing Port route. This tranquil view of  Banat-i Hill and Baclayon coastline is one of the gift nature freely gives to travellers.