Plant more!

My love for plant started long time ago even before this pandemic started. Whenever I came home from Manila, my first agenda is overhaul our garden since my parents can no longer fix them or it's not just their thing. I grew up having a wide area of bermuda grass in front of our house where we can have a picnic or chitchat with family or friends. That grass also is a great help when my daughter was learning how to walk.

Now, back to my topic. Me and my sister loves to buy different flowering plants as they give a happy and vibrant vibe in every home. But then they always ended up dying because there is no one to take care of them when we leave for school or work in Manila. However, that never stopped us from trying and buying. I think our greatest influence was our training back in elementary days. As early as grade one, our teacher had asked us to bring our own plant on our first week of school. And we will take care of that plant the whole school year. Then as we progress, the school taught us how to plant pechay, eggplants, mung beans and tomatoes which would require us to go to school even on weekends just to water them. Before graduated from Grade 6, our teacher asked us to bring a tree of mango and then plant them in the school backyard, they said that would be our legacy. We even put our names in the bark of the mango. As time passes by, school improvements especially establishment of a highschool level hindered the mango tree from growing because they need to cut them off. Maybe if that had not happened, our mango tree would have been bearing a lot of fruits now.

In our little space in Bulacan, I started planting cactus and succulents. At first I thought caring for them is as easy as 1, 2, 3. But no, it is harder than that and it needs a lot of understanding as each kind requires different kind of soil, sunlight and care. We tried buying like 20 kinds in our first attempt and took care of them inside our house. They don't like it there and out of 20 only 2-4 survived. So I need to join groups and ask the basics. Now, we have like 30 different kinds of cactus and succulents and have sold some of the already. Soon they will invade our little home💚☺️.

When pandemic started, me and my siblings got to try urban gardening. Making use of the plastic bottles to grow our own plants. We successfully grow our own tomatoes, bell peppers and water spinach which we enjoyed a lot. Before we went home, I think we have harvested like 5 times with our water spinach. We need to give our tomatoes and bell peppers away to our neighbors because we cannot bring them home in Ilocos.

As soon as we arrived home last June this year, my little advocacy to plant more started to come to life. We only have periwinkles, z plant and aloe veras in our garden then. With the help of our generous neighbors and friends, I was able to fill our garden with different kind of plants; indoor and outdoor; flowering and not. Now we have different kinds of snake plants, more periwinkles, caladiums, fortune plants, monstera, pothos and many others.

I even adopted a wild plants like mimosa which is already thriving and soon to bloom.

And just 2 weeks ago, I adapted a wild grass. It looks like a sweet potato plant but it has thinner leaves and what attracted me more is that it has blue flowers. I did not hesitate to pull it off and bring it home because of that. And this morning upon checking, more buds are sprouting and some already bloomed beautifully.

From two kinds of periwinkles, we have like 8-10 kinds already. Periwinkles are my favorites because it is a great reminder of my father. He loves this plant; very vibrant, colorful and very easy to grow.

There are a lot more to share but I'm afraid it may already bore you. And I want to also inspire you to plant more, adapt as many as you can. Plants does not only make our garden beautiful and colorful but also helps mother earth heal as well as for our future generations. They deserve an environment that is cleaner and greener; a jungle full of plants not concrete ones.

Hope you can join in my little advocate, one plant can make a difference!

Thanks for reading. Keep inspiring. Keep smiling.