A lot of people have wondered why family chose to move so far away from almost anywhere hehehe. Malayo talaga kami. Only those who have visited our home leave with the answer. They come, they soak it in...and most often than not...take forever to leave because they don't want to. A home that is loved
and cared for is home no matter how far, and where we live
is
breathtaking. Sure there aren't many
neighbors yet, but
that is precisely what we are cherishing for the moment, the peace, quiet, and privacy of big open spaces, the sound of only frogs and crickets at night, fresh air...and green fields. Here's our cat Victor kissing part of our garden. See, he loves green, too.
Only weeks after his return almost 6 months ago, our long lost driver, Clyde, who I've known since I was 6 (Bruce Wayne had Alfred, I had him), began to plant on the outskirts of our lot. Although our cook Nimfa has always had a green thumb in addition to her culinary expertise, she only had the time to begin a small vegetable garden right behind our kitchen, which at the time was already impressive. Without Clyde, Nimfa already planted basil, oregano, a papaya tree, some edible weed seedlings I won at a raffle event, tanglad (lemon grass), alugbati, malunggay, little hot chilis, and some other stuff. So our pastas always have fresh basil. Mom loves plants, as I do, and on occasion has found the time to search for potted herbs or veggie seedlings at the palengke (yes in slippers and all, for those who can't imagine her going to the wet market hehehe! sometimes with me and my brother). Waking up in Laguna:
Now that Clyde's work has begun to thrive we have a growing food source surrounding our lot on its excess of a few square meters. We've got rows of corn stalks, Chinese petchay, wansuy, peanuts, pineapple, strawberries, cherry and big tomatoes, local and imported peppermint, spring onions, edible flowers, edible weeds, big and small peppers, bell peppers in addition to everything that Nimfa planted...in fact I'm missing several things. Here's Kano, our avid mouse catcher on our slope (orange) and Victor rolling around beside the petchay and below 1 of several strawberry plants.
This vision of plants to feed us began to grow after Mom read the book The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. In it, the author describes the challenge humans face today which is the difficulty of validating the source of one's food. In observing the quality of life of a Christian family with an organic farm, the author is enlightened in many ways and proceeds to outline, alongside his observations on the farm, the ugly truths about certain fast food restaurants and available food outlets such as the local supermarket, the danger of meat that travels thousands of miles and several days before getting to your table, not to mention chicken nuggets, those little yummy breaded things people thought were the healthy choice at the Golden Arches hardly have any real chicken pala. For a long time I thought, with my hectic job, that I don't have the time to care about where my food comes from as long as I eat. I began to have a change of heart when unhealthy food slowly took its toll on my dad as well as on me. We must care more about whether what we eat is slowly making us less healthy or whether it's helping us live a fuller life. This is an edible blue ternate flower, we put it in salads...it taste like peanuts :) not bitter.
The health benefit of something fresh, whether vegetables or fresh-kill meat, surpasses anything man-made. My heart yearns for what man lost ages ago, the simple privilege of taking and eating from a garden, without even having to farm it. A few weeks ago, mom had some native chickens bought from a nearby place and my brother witnessed Clyde kill and prepare them for grilling inasal. We had that for lunch. Harvesting from our little patch of Eden at home somehow really makes me feel closer to the Creator, Who after all is the original source of everything we were really meant to have.
