Wanting A Pleasurable Pastime: Gardening

By Danny S. Villanueva
(A copy for the Ihip Newsletter.)

At the start of my retirement several years ago, I had looked towards having worthwhile pastime activities which are pleasurable and invigorating. Browsing the internet, talking with siblings abroad, and composing articles for the Ihip Newsletter have kept me glued on my PC for several hours a day. This includes baby sitting Margaret, our grandchild, by watching series of nursery videos. Sabrie and I are fond of Sudoku puzzles, too. These are life pleasure, except that my feet get swollen for sitting too long.

I needed other diversions to provide some kind of physical activities in lieu of regular sports and exercises. Regular cleaning of our cars and the parts under the hood serve as a good work out for me. I tried for months to walk around the village early morning but the daily drill triggered my reflux that slowed me down and later compelled me to stop it temporarily. I become a ready handy man at home doing small repairs that keeps my mind busy on problem solving which seems to drive my reflux away.

Watering the garden and helping Sabrie do plant rearrangement have been a pleasant chore, too. The garden chore includes raking up falling leaves from the kayomito, santol, mabolo, chico and malunggay trees almost twice a day. Then about 2 years ago I put up a vegetable plot complete with balag made with young bamboo poles. Initially, it was fun with ampalaya vines growing abundantly with fruits. As time rolled by, it was not so much fun. nor was it easy. The kalabasa, upo and eggplant failed to sustain their growth. The ampalaya shows short life cycle. However, the Montenegro beans or sitaw grew beautifully with plentiful fruits that we shared with our neighbors. Sabrie progressed to widen the pepper variety from labuyo to bell peppers. She also added gabi plants. The lowly talbos ng kamote grows very well requiring much less attention.

Gardening has been the way of life for generations for our old folks. But for me without any farming background, where common sense only applies, our small garden provides a new source of pleasure for us. Groping to learn more, I found out that I failed to continuously plant seeds for sitaw and ampalaya regeneration for their long survival. Sad are the days when heavy rains would flood the plot that harms the young plants. Our gardening, indeed, becomes a kind of learning hobby where we find joy and relevance.

To have a vegetable garden is really satisfying. Starting with seeds, they begin to grow, eventually there are flowers and finally fruits appear. Now that is really awesome. It is also a joy to sit at the dinner table and enjoy sinigang or pinakbet with freshly grown ampalaya and sitaw, steamed talbos ng kamote, talbos ng sili for the tinola and the malunggay in ginisang monggo. Upcoming is the laing with our gabi leaves. These are enough to make our mouth water.

Planting, weeding and picking vegetable in the family garden becomes now a routine chore for me and Sabrie. As time moves on, we may need to try new variety of vegetables which are easy to grow with the existing plot. We may need to study and try ways to protect the plants from worms, weeds, ants and other pests that harm the garden.

The fun of gardening changes as our bodies are getting little older everyday. Getting down on our knees, or bending over, stretching without a decent warm up could cause us quite a bit of discomfort. But never mind that, what is important is that we enjoy our flowers, vegetables and fruits, and nothing like seeing the efforts of our hard work enjoyed by the family and neighbors.
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