27 items of flora…

…That I’ve planted and nourished — and here they are, right off: cosmos, marigolds, tomatoes, cannabis sativa, Brussels sprouts, eucalyptus tree (blue gum), octopus tree, mayana, jacaranda, Red bilbergia, neem tree, monstera deliciosa, Buddha bamboo, heliconia, torch ginger, sanseviera or Mother-in-law’s Tongue, aloe vera or what we call sabila (and yes, tried it on my head, too, as well as on skin burns from a crackling pot of lechon kawali), dama de noche, caballero, Golden Shower, Mickey Mouse plant or foxglove, blue pea vine or ternate, gumamela or hibiscus, cadena de amor, sinamomo, cryptanthus, ashitaba…

There. I’ve named 27 plant species to correspond with the number of years this proud newspaper has been in blossom. I’ve grown much more than that number, but for this space I’ve cited just enough of the plants and trees, in chronological order, too, that is, based on the time of planting (sowing or repotting) since the initial aspiration towards a green-thumbing life overtook me as a hippie at the Woodstock turn of the decade (read: the 1970s).

It all started with cosmos, the easiest to sow and sprout, from filched seeds from neighbors’ gardens. Purple, orange, yellow flowers — always a delight to the eye. An early poem of mine even celebrates the first pocket garden I tended, at roadside: “… Cosmos grows wild and orange by your gate/ A yelp leaps up from your heart’s mind’s eye…”

At about that same time, a friend gave me a pot with what is usually called an octopus plant that grows into a tree, and which usually had eight leaves protruding from each branchlet, though sometimes there are only seven.

I replanted it on the ground, just inside our gate. It grew fast by the perimeter wall, so that after a few years I had a carpenter construct a modest wooden deck around it, set against the wall, about five feet from the ground. And I could step up a short ladder onto that deck, which could fit three or four flower children in lotus poses for morning or sundown meditation.

One afternoon, kumpareng Juaniyo Arcellana joined me for a White Castle whiskey sort of meditation on that deck, and we listened to a transistor radio blaring the sad bad news of Ninoy Aquino’s murder at the tarmac.

By that time I had grown marigolds around tomato patches in the side yard that extended from the deck. Why, I was even successful with Brussels sprouts, whose seeds came from an imported packet. That was because I had learned to make excellent compost in a pit I myself dug at the far end of that narrow side yard.

The soil in that little area became so rich that I harvested good plump tomatoes and actually got to cook my own homegrown Brussels sprouts. Maybe you won’t believe it, especially since if you see Brussels sprouts at all at any supermarket, they’ll cost an arm and a leg and come frozen.

In any case, my side yard’s soil was so good the cannabis sativa I used to grow in large pots shot up to as tall as seven feet when I grew them in that yard.

And the single eucalyptus seedling (a blue gum) I got from Baguio also flourished wondrously in the roadside yard together with the cosmos, marigolds and mayanas. The blue gum with the camouflage-pattern bark grew so fast and so tall that in only a couple of years, it towered over me at 20 feet, reaching the Meralco power lines. And that’s because I had deposited the one-foot-tall seedling directly above my fine compost lying six inches thick at the bottom of a a hole in the ground two feet deep.

Baguio beckoned often in those days. One time my partner and I visited an arboretum where scientific experiments were being conducted by German experts. We had heard of a display of Lopophora williamsii, which is a hallucinogenic succulent. We were in awe at its sight, so eye-candy with little orange flowers. And we came away with a jacaranda seedling, which I managed to replant successfully, directly in the ground by one corner of the wooden cabin, formerly a summer retreat for Episcopalian nuns, that we had leased for years in Bangaan, a 30-minute walk from Sagada in Mt. Province.

 That first brush with gardening in the years we lived in Teachers’ Village in Quezon City, as well as the sporadic vacays in Bangaan (where I grew potatoes and salad greens, away from the acidic Benguet pine trees) came in handy in subsequent decades.

Moving a short distance away to a bungalow with a respectable front yard and backyard, in UP Village, gave me more opportunities to pretend to be a full-time gardener.

I grew a row of neem trees in the front yard to protect our family from mosquitoes. I kept the back lawn of carabao grass in perfect trim, between the single Indian mango tree and a row of cacao that had already been there, lined up against the back wall.

For some reason, I can’t recall now what other flora I had tried to nurture around that modest bungalow. Maybe it’s because we soon found reason to have a house built in Valle Verde. And that was where my thumb turned practically apple green as I set about to surround our home with numerous plant species.

Orchids I can’t ever grow diligently, but ferns including a staghorn decorated the wall past a side yard, along with Red bilbergias, lilies, grasses, heliconias, euphorbia, bougainvillaea of course, the curious monstera deliciosa with hole-y leaves, torch ginger, and among many others, the fortune plant from Davao which had little yellow flowers as well as red ones with black eyes, as a kind of strange bipolar condition. 

 Receiving a Christmas gift of Buddha bamboo in a clay pot, I joyfully replanted it on the ground by a ficus benjamina I had also grown from scratch. Both became monsters of growth in a number of years, helped along by my magic compost — this time coming from a large corner pit which a couple of maids helped me tend. 

When we moved to Valle Verde, I also transplanted a number of neem trees, not within our lot but on the peripheries of empty lots close to our place. I tried to grow a Golden Shower tree whose seedling had come from National Artist Franz Arcellana and his wife Emy’s front yard, but it didn’t prosper. What did was a giant caballero seedling I purchased from Chito Bertol’s (Elvis Presley of the Philippines) plant shop at the Manila Seedling Bank in QC.

I had planted it on a spot by the pavement just as the labor crew was completing the house construction, together with the Golden Shower some four meters away. I still suspect that the laborers fed the latter species with too much of night soil, meaning that they must have passed water close to it much too often. And so it died. But the giant caballero flourished, growing as high as 30 feet until an overzealous driver hacked off the top branches in a mistaken effort to enhance our frontage.   

That’s the thing with horticulture. The failures are often as much as highlights or landmarks as the successes. Some kinds of ivy I’ve smuggled in from European jaunts couldn’t hack our summer — ditto plants I’ve brought in from Japan. A few kinds of cypress and pine I’ve brought back as seedlings (carefully wrapped in towels and hidden inside a suitcase) from California became total successes at my in-laws’ property in Tagaytay. And the Mickey Mouse or foxglove that triumphed from seeds, nurtured by my care and prayers, flourished like anything in a farm in Indang, Cavite. 

My latest faves as silent pets include the blue pea vine or ternate (the first seedlings of which were given by book scholar Sonia Ner, bless her soul), the red gumamela or hibiscus I’m now tending to its full glory in our pavement yard alongside the Brazilian annatto (achuete), the purple triangularis from amiga Alma Miclat, the cadena de amor, kamuning and various other species from poet-architect Cesar Aljama, the cryptanthus, and the false ashitaba from MTRCB deputy Gerry Cornejo…

The number and kinds of plants one has palmed off into soil and patiently cared for makes for a life, a glowingly good one at that, I think. I may still envy many friends for their more resplendent gardens, but the conversations I’ve had with my little babies and monstrous giants have been most psychologically satisfying, as Atty. Rene Saguisag would put it. So that at night I sleep very well indeed and I still suck my green-glen whisky thumb.