From a plant "killer" to a gardener-in-training
My love for gardening came way too late - call it a slow-moving love affair that took long years to develop and take form.
My favorite place in the whole world was outside
All I knew was I loved everything about nature. Either rolling on the grass, running around in the rice fields, tree climbing, or foraging for food with childhood friends, staying outdoors, and always looking for adventures was a constant scene in my simple countryside life growing up.
While I do love the natural environment and regularly get exposed to it through everyday outdoor "expeditions" with friends, I was not attracted to the idea of growing edibles even when both of my parents love growing all sorts of things from scratch.
My earliest gardening memory was of my mother's small garden. She adores flowers. I grew up seeing mom feed her dear plants with diluted urine. I learned later when I started my garden that pee-cycling is the simplest way to boost your plants with high-quality natural nitrogen-phosphorous-potassium (NPK) elements they need to thrive. I used it once to fertilize our ornamental plants but didn't continue as I could not get over the "Ewwww!" factor and was worried the neighbors would notice (lol).
Going back to my mother's garden, I didn't know or understand what it meant – of saying sayonara to a once-lovely plant due to a clumsy six-year-old me. Yes, I "killed" mom's plants once too many times, either by accident (like a cloth hanger fell on her favorite plant which resembles in my memory that of shrimp plant/false hop), or watering them with not so diluted urine. As luck would have it, I found a legit way to avoid the watering chore (lol).
My father was the same. He was an agriculturist, so it was natural for him to indulge in farming-related activities. Of all five children, I was the only one my father brought and exposed to his daily work (he was stationed in land reform communities). He encouraged my curiosity and nurtured my inquisitive nature and thirst for wonder and adventure in so many ways.
He had planted onions and garlic and taught me the traditional method of storing them through braiding. Now with plenty of easy to follow tutorials online, I’m sure I can remember how to do that again in no time (lol). Often, his “projects” would result in little or just enough harvest, but he was happy, contented in fact, which is something my younger self did not understand then.
We would also visit families in remote areas and drink water from mountain springs along the way (I remember it so crisp and refreshing!). At the end of each week, we would bring home a sack full of (and a delighted look on our faces) fruits and vegetables his friends and colleagues give him, or in exchange for home appliances, my father sells on the side.
When we moved house at the age of seven, maybe, I had more access to broader nature and the great outdoors. I remember drowning my sorrows away, hiding in my favorite mango tree at the back of the house or our neighbor's every time I get scolded (what can I say, I was a handful lol). I would take my mom's Mills & Boon pocketbooks, rest on a sturdy branch, listen to the leaves rustling around me, or a gust of wind making the whole tree creak. I would wake up earlier than others every day to pick up mangoes or passion fruits that fell off the neighbor's trees (my idea of another form of foraging lol).
Fast forward many years, and I became a busy grown-up working in the big city. Endless crowds and long-rush journey every day. Gone was the laid-back environment. Limited access to the wild outdoors. A fleeting sense of connections to the natural world. You get the picture.
I hadn't thought about growing from anything to something until after my parents bought land about a 15-minute walk away from our house and built a nipa hut (a type of stilt house indigenous to the cultures of the Philippines). I followed suit with another land next to my parents and planted (correction, my father did!) a whole stretch of the yummiest dragon fruit.
Initially, Papa would be just as happy with few vegetables and fruits, while mama would make the rest house more idyllic and homely with flowers and more flowers and little surprises tucked here and there. Now, mama spends her retirement days (from teaching) planting as many vegetables, fruit trees, and flowers as possible and hardly buying fresh produce from the market anymore. She would periodically "torture" me with photos of her delicious bounty and pet projects (lately was a tree house). We would talk for hours about her garden of edibles and the dragon fruit farm and how her regular customer had to queue to get their hands on the dragon fruit literally. Every time I hear my mother's talk of her deep love of gardening, it was every bit pure thrill of happiness (and satisfaction).
My mini food forest in the city
Looking back, this nagging feeling to connect with nature has always been there. In my case, I wasn't able to make it happen until 2018 (some parts of it at least). Maybe I wanted to create my version of sanctuary away from home (hubby and I live overseas now), I felt like I've just slid into it naturally.
That space I called my "happy place" is not a beauty (so far from my parents!), but a gently unruly one. The second time we moved, we were able to find just the perfect house with a sun-facing balcony and windowsills. At that time, I thought gardening was just a way to keep myself busy with something not related to work. I can see now that it has grown beyond passing the time. It became my go-to and everyday activity to make myself feel better, connected, grounded.
It was a slow learning process building our container garden in the city (which I will discuss in my next blog post). My first deliberate try (an epic fail at that) was a lazy experiment with tomatoes, rocket/arugula, and ladyfingers. Eventually, I developed a love of other edibles and herbs and experimented with different ways of growing them.
Over the last two years, a lot has changed in my garden and the way I look at gardening and the natural world. I found inspiration from being part of a community of 25,000+ members and their shared love of growing and cooking from scratch. The balcony garden became more than just a place where vegetables and a few flowering plants lovingly cohabit. It became so much more, and before I realized it, I did too.
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