Missing the secret garden

(Take 2, after losing my original draft)

I've been revisiting photo files from the year 2015. The year was personally memorable because I was taken ill for quite a while and confined at length at The Medical City.

When I returned to the world that was still spinning at its usual pace despite my prolonged depressive episode, I wasn't allowed to go out of the house unless I was chaperoned. My usual companion and chokaran then was Macky, the yaya of my then four-year old grandchild Kai. (While Macky, short for Mackenzie, kept me company, my mother, who has since passed on, and my daughter Kimi minded Kai who was pulled out of school in Baguio to be with me.)

So being housebound or being under strict house arrest is nothing new to me. When I was allowed a little freedom of movement, Macky accompanied me to the lecture of balikbayan poet Luisa A. Igloria at De La Salle University. Not only was the lecture substantive that I was able to compose an article out of Dr. Igloria's lecture notes, the event was well organized by Shirley O. Lua of DLSU. I remember the savory adobo served.

So my new life, post-hospitalization, revolved around weekend trips to Baguio and weekdays spent correcting my students' papers, preparing lessons, chasing after story sources (life of a freelancer).

Rolly in a huddle with his UP Baguio colleagues Del Tolentino (partly hidden) and Rey Rimando

It was around this time when my husband Rolly Fernandez thought of converting an idle patch in our Baguio property into what we called "a secret garden" dedicated to Kai. He had a truck haul in the pebbles, which were scattered and arranged neatly on the ground. He tamed the wildness by planting shrubs and flowering bushes. Then he invited our friend Rey Rimando, a retired math prof at UP Baguio and full-time gardener in La Union, for a visit.

Rey being Rey, he had opinions on everything from the foot path to the watering system. He offered advice on what plants thrived in the shade and what liked the sun. Rolly nodded, but knowing him, I knew he was separating chaff from the grain.

Name that wildflower.

Since then, the garden became the final stop where Kai and I parked ourselves after our morning walks in the neighborhood. Her paternal grandparents presented her with a garden set complete with a parasol. While we chattered and took pictures of the flowers, Rolly would join us with his second or third mug of coffee. We had Baguio's immense blue, blue sky for our roof.

Kai stops to pose for a picture at a neighbor's garden.

I miss the little garden and the refuge it offered. As I encode these words, I'm pale from want of sun and Vitamin D. Once the lockdown is lifted, you know which direction I'm headed for: my true North.

Meanwhile, there is comfort in the verse of Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz:

My generation was lost. Cities too. And nations.
But all this a little later. Meanwhile, in the window, a swallow

#LockdownDiaries

Watching them grow

These days, our Not So Wee One Anymore, a.k.a. Kai, often refuses to smile for or look at the camera. "That is not polite," she says with an accompanying "Hmmmph!" And then she stomps her foot like a Baguio version of the Queen of Hearts, and I can almost hear her imaginary soldiers marching towards me to take off my head.

On my visits to Baguio, I like taking pictures of how my husband Rolly's garden, dedicated to our grandchild, is developing. Yes, developing like the person to whom it is being tended for. Scanning my files, I saw how they (Kai, Rolly and the once secret garden) have grown, too, in years. It's the spot of paradise we are proud of in our home where the grandpa can be found as soon as the sun is up, picking up dried leaves or snipping branches here and there with his pruning scissors or bare hands (careful there!). Grandchild offers to water the plants or just walk around, acting as my spotter and telling me what closeup pictures to take.

I'm posting these since we are approaching Earth Day which is observed worldwide on April 22. Gardens may be a luxury during this time of El Niño when farmers and their families are making their parched voices and grumbling stomachs heard, often to indifferent government officials. Now, don't get me started. I don't want to meander just yet to another subject as hot as the sweltering summer sun is.

Meanwhile, how green was our garden then. I used the past tense there with hopes that The Heavenly Gardener (Our Father in heaven) would send some refreshing rain soon.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Meet the foremost champion on radio–and now on cable TV–of Filipino classical music artists

Bert Robledo talking about his mission for Filipino classical music artists before his stroke. Those who would like to contribute to his medical fund can email his daughter Celine Robledo Fonacier for the bank details at celinefonacier@gmail.com or go to this site: https://www.generosity.com/medical-fundraising/medical-fund-for-bert-robledo

Meet the foremost champion on radio–and now on cable TV–of Filipino classical music artists

Tulips on Easter

By this time, this beauty must have faded and died a temporary death. Temporary because God's faithful gardener, my husband Rolly Fernandez, makes sure the seed/bulb is stored in a cool place. Tulips in Baguio? Yes, thanks to the efforts of Marie Therese Jison of Mother's Garden up in Fairview, Quezon Hill, who shares the bulbs with friends who garden. She painstakingly instructs them on the care and growing of these beauties associated with The Netherlands. A glorious Easter indeed! Photos by Babeth Lolarga

A discovery on Pioneer Street

The lady at the counter of this cafe said they've been around for over a year, but I who lives nearby, how come I never noticed it? Perhaps I've been more concerned with getting home in one piece after going through the occasional Pioneer St. traffic to even note how a new hangout had risen beside a small National Bookstore branch inside the Quad Alpha building.

Before the rains we've been experiencing this weekend came, it felt like summer had changed its mind and decided to return, with its heat affecting people who are already natural hotheads. Ice coffee for me was called for with passable ensaymada (is it brioche in English? someone help me on this one). There were tables with a view of the street, and the decorator chose well to have amber bottles lined up, a touch of green and some pebbles in a tray.

No, I haven't been bitten by the adult coloring book addiction that afflicts my eldest daughter. I bought this at the cafe's mother company, National Bookstore. This is meant as a gift to my husband Rolly who's turning 65 in less than a month and who has found new fulfillment in tending a pocket garden that has remained a work in progress. Pretty much like our marriage, I hasten to add. Photos by Babeth Lolarga

My gardening twin

I first met this woman in Pinterest, and she's pinned in one of my boards under the title "Pretty Illustrations." I still have to find out the artist's name. When I took a close look at the woman, I realized that she could be my doppelgänger. From the graying hair to the eyeglasses to the crazy quilt outfit to the stoop of her shoulders down to the Crocs-shod feet, she reminds me of my possibility as my husband's co-gardener. Sorry to say, I'd rather add more pins to my new board, "How Does Your Garden Grow." Pinterest has lately brought me to the garden of Castle Linderhof, Germany, the garden paths in Liverpool, England, jardins de Provence. Tomorrow I visit Versailles. Luv my online life!

Missing the marapait

Hi there, November! What took you so long? The vacant lots or spots not taken over yet by houses and vulcanizing shops show no hint of marapait, our local sunflowers in Baguio. Maybe it isn't cold enough for them, but it's cool enough for the green poinsettia leaves to almost redden overnight.

Thank you, constant gardener, for noting the changes in temperature and how these affect the colors of our hillsides. Photo by Babeth Lolarga

For all occasions

“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” - Rumi

Some notable events I missed writing about: Brothers and Sisters Day, International Jazz Day and World Press Freedom Day.

So here are my offerings for those important days. Thank you, heavenly and earthly gardeners, for keeping these Maytime flowers, our guests in our garden, ever fresh. They are worth the summer that has been cut short by daily afternoon rains, a Baguio feature.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

In the garden

"When I'm writing, I think about the garden, and when I'm in the garden I think about writing. I do a lot of writing by putting something in the ground." -Jamaica Kincaid

Ms. Kincaid is among the authors scholar Del Tolentino introduced me to along with Carolyn Heilbrun (a.k.a. Amanda Cross) and Anne Fadiman whose familiar essays in At Large and At Small I return to every so often for a quick pick me up.

The garden is in my mind every day. It's where I go for a bit of sun and to watch my husband Rolly putter around and make improvements. It's where he sips his second cup of coffee after we have eaten breakfast indoors. It's where Kai and I have our conversations about butterflies, the color of the sky and of the new flowers coming out of their tight buds. It's where I just breathe and try to empty my mind. It's where I think sometimes if I should return to writing for a living or extend my vacation from deadlines - the pull of the latter is stronger when you have the three earlier seasons of Game of Thrones locked somewhere in the TV.

We used to call this open space Kai's secret garden, but since Rolly spends and expends more time and effort on it, it has become his.

Top views of the garden Photo by Babeth Lolarga