Fave Hobby

Gardening, people say, is a form of exercise and investment – exercise because the body uses up energy; thousands of unwanted calories are drawn out to keep the body healthy and well. Investment, too, because it gives us food, free, and being fresh, gives more vitamin content. Extra harvest could be sold in the market for some other things needed for the family. In the countryside, it is a livelihood of our folks. Plants and vegetables grow in their backyard or an area used for the purpose. At this time of the year, eggplants, okra, beans, tomatoes, root crops, and vines abound and much of the harvest is transported urban ward like to Manila.

However, gardening is not as plainly easy as one would think. Showering care, the grower like me, needs to water the plants twice everyday (especially in a summer of long drought), early morning and late afternoon. I need to fertilize the soil around the plants, organic or inorganic, to grow robust plants which will yield better and live longer. When these plants show flowers and fruits begin to appear, harmful insects like bees and bugs from nowhere, attack them, and I must find a way to drive these insects away or exterminate them by spraying obnoxious substances. This process goes on until or before harvest comes.

I am a student specifically a ursing student w/ other responsibilities and obligations but have time for gardening on weekends and holidays, in my spare time, and after school when days are long. My "Sariling Sikap" keeps me busy and alive. From my standpoint, gardening is not just a hobby but a sign of concern for others, an example of culture that must be preserved among us. The value of labor must be cultivated, not indolence, or you become an outcast. And when one takes up gardening as a hobby, no single person would starve, for we would not need to import food. Food shortage in the country would be given a solution.

In congested cities like in Manila, "window gardening" is most ideal. Vegetables could be planted in pots or in cans, in array. Combined or separated from ornamental plants in row, they produce beauty and investment. I recall that this was introduced by the system many years back but it died a natural death. How I wish our government would focus on the program now, give serious attention to it through its concerned agencies. And if properly implemented, I believe it could alleviate poverty in the land.