I am also into gardening long before the quarantine happened and it has helped me keep those negative thoughts away, it's actually my stress reliever. We have planted vegetables and other fruit-bearing trees before and I am happy to harvest the fruit of our labor. Seeing your plants grow healthy and harvest them to add to your food makes us really happy and proud that we made it as a family because we also included our daughter in planting those vegetables and other plants. It makes her happy and excited whenever she sees that our plants have bloomed and produced fruits and vegetables. Gardening is fun and teaches us to be self-sufficient and frugal.
This is our daughter, Miel harvesting the Blue Ternate flowers that we used to make tea, juice, or homemade jelly. Our Blue Ternate plant is not as bushy as in this photo from last year but it is still growing a handful of flowers which we mostly used to feed our pet. By the way, our pet rabbit also loves eating these flowers aside from grass and feeds. Now that we are homeschooled, she learned to be more responsible for her pet, she feeds him every day and makes sure he has enough water for the day.
We have fruit-bearing trees like guyabano, guava, pomegranate and the recent one that we planted a few months ago is the avocado tree but only the first two have produced fruits as of now and we have sold most of it to our friends. Our front yard is not that big so we recycled some old plastic bottles and planted some of our plants like the chillis, chives, and pechay in those containers.
We have also added some herbs into our garden and we have sold some of them and other extra plants that we have like my cactus and succulents. We have bartered some of the plants online and this was the first time that we have experienced trading on social media through Facebook. We have bartered some of our plants for fruits, milk, eggs, and different kind of meats. It was actually a great experience and we were able to have a food supply for more than a month because of the plants we have bartered online. I am happy that someone initiated the Facebook group "Davao Barter Community" because it has really helped many people in our community especially those who are trying to survive and have food on their table after losing their jobs because of the pandemic.
Aside from vegetables and fruits, I have a cactus collection that keeps on blooming, there were two cactus from my collection that bloomed on the same day and both of them are of different variations. I tried and experimented on cross-pollinating them manually using cotton buds. After the flowers had bloomed and dried out, I was so happy to see a seedpod on each of the cactus; it means that I have successfully cross-pollinated them! After a few weeks, I harvested their seeds but unfortunately, I misplaced it and it took 2-3 more weeks before I saw the seedpods on the farthest corner of our house! I planted them immediately hoping that the seeds are still okay. After more than a week, I checked on them and saw that the seeds are growing! Those tiny green sprouts really made me happy because it is my first time to cross-pollinate two different kinds of cactuses and it was a successful one! For now, they are still tiny but I am really hoping they would grow healthy with no complications or whatsoever.
(Seedpods from my Gymnocalycium mihanovichii and Gymnocalycium Damsii)
I know that cactuses are very resilient and those tiny cactuses have proved that even though they had been tossed around (I'm pretty sure they've been because it was way too far from where I remember I put it in) and some of the tiny seeds are scattered on one corner for weeks but surprisingly they are still okay and I was really amazed to see them grow after a week. Then, I thought... maybe this is a reminder that no matter how many times we've been tossed around, even though life is hard for us right now, there is still hope and like those tiny seeds, we can overcome those adversities and grow to be the best version of ourselves and be more resilient should there be a crisis that may come again in the future.
Life is tough since the pandemic started and it was not easy but we have to keep moving or else we will be stuck in a hole and it will be too hard to get up. As the saying goes, “Life goes on”… Whether we want it or not, life goes on even if there is a pandemic. While some of us feel scared and anxious, some are holding on and keep their hopes up not for themselves but for the family they have built.
During the quarantine, we've learned to value and appreciate the small things that we have often taken for granted. We've learned to appreciate the people whom we didn't expect to extend their hands during our difficult times and we are so thankful for the people who were just there to offer their time and lend their ears and listen without judgment. We are beyond grateful for our friends and families who have been there for us to overcome these trials. We've learned to value more our family now that we have a lot of quality time to spend with them at home. On my family's side, I haven't seen my Mom and some of my siblings for a while but I am so glad that despite the distance we still get to communicate and update our family member's status from overseas, thanks to social media, it helps to lessen our worries and the good thing is that it has brought us closer than we were before pandemic happened.
For now, we try to live each day as best as we could, hoping and praying that this pandemic will be over soon and everyone can go back to his or her lives packed with all the realizations and lessons that this pandemic has taught us.
May this photo of a cactus inspires and reminds all of us to be resilient and that we can still bloom despite all the adversities life throws at us...
“This is an official entry to the Davao Bloggers Blog Caravan for October 2020 with the theme Quarantine Lessons.”
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