The Joys and Surprises of Home Gardening

CEBU, Philippines - Some 35 years ago, I woke up one early morning in early spring. I was then with my wife and our four pre-teenage children residing in the Wolverine state of Michigan, famous for its Hiawatha National Forest named after a legendary American Indian chief who was immortalized in the narrative poem, "Songs of Hiawatha" (1855) by no less than the poet Harvard professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the mid-19 century.

Michigan is also until presently labeled as the automobile capital of the world, specifically Detroit, Michigan, where I spent my last year of residency training as a specialist in behavioral science and mental health.

That very morning, I slowly began experiencing uncanny feelings of awe, tickled with a humbling self-admiration after I saw outside a glittering fragile-looking bulbous mass of multicolored hues of red and white with a light tint of lavender through one of my defrosting windows. I soon figured out, it was the only flower in bloom capping the tip of only one of several rows of green onions that were planted on my perimeter lot garden seven or eight months earlier.

It was quite a rare and unforgettably mesmerizing sight to behold. I had never seen nor heard of one reported in the Philippines and perhaps not until the closing years of my lifetime.

Losing the few pictures in my collection of said common plant - onion (scientific name Allium cepa Linn) - magnified my recurring surges of nostalgia over it, particularly since I've quitted my torrid affair with 'sublimation', a seven-year 'addiction' of sky-running and doing ultra-marathons, from 2007 to 2013, just two years ago.

A contemporary philosopher-romantic has said: "Fortune sides with him who dares." Thus, even now in my 70s, I continue to dare 'not to stop' doing what I love to do and enjoy doing, that is - gardening. It is quite a fortune that I now have in my front yard garden, here in Cebu City's barangay Guadalupe, the  "Caesaria" Banana (scientific name: Musa paradisiacal Linn.)

A normal mature banana in its fruit-bearing state would have its flowerhead at the very tip of a vertical axis of the elongating stem around the plant's crown. On the stem comes next the purplish modified leaves or bracts, immature flowers turning into mature ones or fingers, cluster of fingers or hand, or "sipi," often numbering between two and eight, before locating its point of emergence from the crown or crowd of two- to three-meter long fully mature banana leaves. The bunch or "bulig" of mature bananas follows a direction governed by the natural Law of Gravity: therefore from the top or crown to its flowerhead tip is a vertical direction toward the ground.

Compared to the normal banana, the trunk of a mature "Caesaria" bulges out at around the middle height of entire trunk. The bulge grows to cause a split on the surface of the trunk, allowing the stem, bracts, and hands to come out in succession (usually 5 to7 days one after the other) but leaving the flowerhead somehow inside in its bosom. The sequence proceeds in a seemingly upward direction, as if defying the natural Law of Gravity.

If "Caesaria" as a live phenomenon does not qualify for "Ripley's Believe-It-or-Not" print media series of long ago, I don't know what does. I think "Caesaria" is one of the amazing surprises of Mother Nature.

For now, I'm just truly enjoying the unexpected presence of the plant in my garden. This one is like the Phoenix emerging from the ashes, and is such a treasure to behold.

"Caesaria," by the way, is a name I give it, coined after the surgical delivery called Caesarian Section to deliver an infant, performed by a team of at least three trained personnel: anesthesiologist, surgical nurse, and the the operating surgeon or obstetrician.

 I named this plant so, because of a tricky bare-hand maneuver necessary to free its embedded two-thirds flowerhead in order to hasten the plant's fruit-bearing process. The procedure also insures the stability of the entire trunk from bottom up, using ropes, straps, etc. and assists towards the eventual maturity or ripening of the fruits.

Life is so full of surprises to prevent me from stopping. Just when I decide to slow down, they come closer by. Now, the wonder is right in my own garden. (FREEMAN)