Friday Blues

Sometimes you feel that sudden bout of emptiness and you think of negative things that happened to you before. Once in a while you feel alone and afraid.

Last night, I tried losing myself to a lovely thriller by Lee Child called 61 hours. There are times that sleep would not show its face no matter what I do. Reading though helps a lot. For the first time in I think eight years, I am not participating in Goodyears’ Reading Challenge but still I promised myself to read twenty books of fiction. I read a page or two of the poems I am trying on my own to interpret, slow reading to the max. I haven ‘t made a dent yet since I’m only on the 45th page after a month and a half. Anyway, I guess keeping a journal and not just a blog is keeping me sane. My writing has changed a lot. Getting old? Probably it’s because of the unsteady grip of the pen on my journal. A thick one which I started a few years ago has become a smorgasbord of thoughts, recipes, phone numbers that I want to commit on paper, real names of my WordPress friends here, list of gifts I’ve given to the family members over the years and a list of daily expenses. I know to the last centavo how much is in my bank accounts. I know when to use my credit card and program a day to pay everything in one go. Being a banker before, I am always aware of the cut-offs. I am using a new journal just for those thoughts after reading a poem. Would love to jump to a page where Mary Oliver’s poem was featured but I think I am patient enough to wait.

The day has been so windy outside since this morning but the sun was shining brightly. I went to the garden to water the plants then I noticed the two pots of my Amazon lily with buds, something to look forward to when the scented white flowers bloom.

And for the first time, Josef is trying to grow tomatoes from seeds. He has already transferred them to several pots when they reached six inches. They are dwarf tomatoes. I have three tomato plants growing at the back garden and one is already bearing fruits. I can see some jutes growing too. In our country, it is called saluyot and it is an antioxidant.

There is one good thing about Friday night, I could spend late hours reading and wake up an hour or two later than my usual time in the morning.

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My Gardenia In Bloom

It showed its face slowly

And I can’t wait

For the petals to unfurl

But I can smell

The sweet scent from here.

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Starting All Over Again

I lost most of the photos I uploaded on my documents in my computer. I should have copied them to my hard drive but I was so lazy. Anyway, at least some of them are still in my camera.

I could not concentrate reading until I master this block editor a bit. I am finally getting the hang of it. Hopefully in the next few days, I’ll be well acquainted to it.

Spent the time gardening the last two days. I was able to trim our carabao grass and plant more seedlings in the process. I actually ordered three air plants together with air plant holders at Lazada. Here’s the first one.

It is called Ionantha CV air plant. I hope I could propagate it someday. My order of different colors of Zinnia has just arrived from Lazada. I hope they thrive as well. I divided my Sedum, planted them into four pots. They love the sun.

People call those who love plants plantitos and plantitas here. I’ve been a gardener for too long to be called such, I’d rather be called a simple gardener.  Those who are crazy about those lovely plastic pots, some with even corrugated designs  just love to show off what they have planted.  I’d rather plant them direct to the soil if I can.

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Lazy Does It

As I am so lazy to read, I gardened for a while this afternoon. The soil is still wet from the rain early this morning so it is hard to uproot the weed because of the mud so I did a little pruning instead.

It’s been a while since I tended the garden because the past few days, it’s been so hot.  And I was so lazy to stay there even when it was quite breezy in the afternoon. I found this patch of green growing at the side of our compost pit.

It is a carpet of moss actually.  They are really not that big  but I wish they would cover the whole side of the pit.

This Covid is getting on my nerves, we might even reach a total of 300,000 by the end of the month, no concrete plans still, they are just waiting for a vaccine. We have the most number of infections in Southeast Asia. Good thing  there is our VP Leni helping the people despite the limited budget of the OVP.  The government will be narrowing down social distancing in public utility vehicles in the next few weeks. That might trigger another surge in the pandemic.

Happy midweek everyone. Keep safe, you all.

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How To Recognize Male and Female Plant Seed

For gardeners out there, have you tried this? I have this old post which I wrote in May 11, 2009 and posted it at my blog Gardens and Empty Spaces. Back then “like” was not yet introduced by WordPress I think but you can comment on the post. This has earned a lot of comments.  Someone commented just yesterday. I am reposting it here.

In our trip to Zambales  a few days ago, I learned some interesting facts about growing things in one’s backyard, very common of which is the papaya plant. Papaya is a soft-wooded perennial plant that has an average lifespan of 5 years and would grow about 4 meters high. The flowering stage is from five to eight months after planting and harvesting comes around five to six months after that.

My sister-in-law is a certified farmer, she underwent a complete 6-months seminar given by the Dept. of Agriculture.  She shared with us what she learned and gave us some seeds of different vegetables which are quite easy to grow, given a small space ,even just in pots.

I was not even aware that you would be able to know whether that papaya tree in your own backyard will bear fruit or not. Most of us just wait for papaya to produce flowers before we will be able to detect whether it is a male or a female.  Papaya flowers are just like jasmine blossoms. The flowers of female papayas are close to the stems while that of the male ones produce long flowers. But we really don’t have to wait for six months before we’ll be able to know if they are worth cultivating or not.  That’s a waste of time and space, according to my sister-in-law. We know for a fact that only female papayas produce those sweet and delicious fruits. One sure way of knowing is this, papaya male plants have one straight root while those of the females are branched-out, producing two or more roots, they’re the only ones that you have to transfer and plant.  Interesting!

Tomatoes are capable of self-pollination so they grow fruits on their own. Same goes true with squash. We have planted some squash  and tomatoes in our small backyard and  they’re growing  by leaps and bounds everyday.  We also planted pechay (Pak Choi) in small pots. Eggplant seedlings are sprouting like crazy. I can’t wait, I am quite excited waiting for everything to grow.

I tried planting chayote two days ago at the back garden. We have a permanent trellis there where it could climb on. It is also known as mirliton squash,  an edible plant belonging to the gourd family Cucurbitaceae.  When cooked, chayote is usually handled like summer squash; it is generally lightly cooked to retain the crispy consistency. Let us see how it grows in the next few days.

Our back garden and that’s Noki looking at some of our cats.

Planted some sweet potato vines a couple of months ago. We use the young leaves (found at the tip of each branch) to mix with our sinigang.

 

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A Busy Monday Morning

5:30 am

I was sitting at the garden waiting for the day to begin. The street lights were still on and it was dark still. With a mug of Swiss Miss in hand, I was also listening to the classical music on my transistor radio before the station signs in. It was one of those no-commercial break stations featuring those lovely music and passages from the Bible with corresponding reflections….lovely.

The morning is waking up. Cars and motorcycles break the silence. I got my garden shears and started  trimming the carabao grass. It has grown again in the whole month that we didn’t touch them. I stayed at the garden close to two hours and I didn’t even make a dent except trimming those so close to the concrete stepping stones.

That cleaner portion was the only thing I’ve done this morning.

I still have to trim the carabao grass here at the front of the house.

Only a grass cutter is practical here because we have lots of stepping stones  all the way from the garage up to the side of the house. I hope this afternoon won’t be too hot so I could garden again.

This is where my hanging plants are at the side of the house.

It’s a little tiring to stay in the garden when the sun is up.

 

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Mother In Law’s Tongue

I took shots of more blooms in the garden early this morning. There are very few flowers but I love the greens just as well. I also transferred a pot of Snake plant indoor.

Do you know that Snake plants have several benefits in our lives? It also needs minimal care.

I wonder why they call it Mother in Law’s Tongue otherwise known as Sansevieria. It does not need a lot of water, you can water it weekly and is also  ideal indoors.

“The Snake Plant cleans air better than most other indoor plants as it has the ability to absorb excessive amounts of carbon monoxide. Additionally, it emits oxygen and filters other toxins from the air such as benzene, xylene, trichloroethylene and formaldehyde” 

 

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Garden Update

I just posted some photos at my gardening blog. You can find them here.  Please try to visit the site if you have time. Thanks a million.

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A Nice Surprise

Tried growing these small Colocasia plants which I found  alongside my Vinca. I used to have them in different colors but they always die a natural death sometime during the summer to resurface again when rainy season is near.

I put the three tubers in a bottle with water and they now have long roots.  They are happily thriving inside our comfort room. They are also known as elephant ears or simply Taro or  gabi in Tagalog. I have the green ones at one  corner of the garden with large leaves.

This hasn’t unfurled yet but when it does, the leaves are large.

There are always surprises in the garden. Sometimes I find new shoots of plants that I used to have but have died on me for a time.

The garden is a place where we could spend those precious hours, head in the sun, dirt in your hands but a big smile on your face.

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More Greens

I told you in a previous blog post about our Gardeners’ party yesterday. Here’s my loot. I don’t actually know its name  but I love its variegated leaves and the way it is growing. Had to find a bigger pot for it.

I re-potted this white grass two weeks ago but our Shih Poo Oreo loves to play with its leaves.

Just trying to put more greens indoors.

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