Maytime

It’s May! It’s May! And we have our own blessed spots to tout ever so lustily.

The floral celebration came early this year. I was surprised to note that the young flame trees on the center island of Julia Vargas Avenue, close to C-5 and leading to the Ortigas Center, started to bloom by mid-April.

In recent years this only occurred by May. In Loyola Heights and fronting the MWSS building on Katipunan Avenue, back of UP Diliman, the caballeros would usually stay resplendent until after the first rains in late June.  

Now the golden showers are also audaciously profuse in their once-a-year, oh-so-brief offerings. You see them on the same stretch past the Valle Verde villages, and on Greenmeadows Avenue. And you’re grateful for the foresight of the realty development planners of 20 or more years ago, to dedicate urban spaces to a show of natural Maytime colors. 

I recall how our small team that serviced FVR with media advisories once went a little out of line by suggesting that he have caballeros and golden showers planted on the newly constructed stretches of C-5. Had the “Asian crisis” not struck at the time, he might not have been distracted, and we would now be enjoying the bursts of efflorescence on that stretch.

But trust private developers to ensure a focus on aesthetics and green-living enhancements, such as what The Fort now enjoys, with its young and already blooming flame trees. Older ones bedeck the American Cemetery, surely a blessed spot, one of the few, in Metro Manila. There are also some old specimens in some parts of the Manila Golf and Country Club, where some trees were “sacrificed” over the past two years in the name of course renovation.

Maybe a century from now, our great-grandchildren can take foreign visitors on a long ride up a superhighway where both roadsides present a continuing panoply of alternating flame trees and golden showers. Add the rare narra with its golden effervescence, the yellow-flowered acacia, the common lilac-hued banaba, and the Palawan cherry with white and pink flowers.

It could become our version of sakura season in Japan, when families and groups congregate upon large mats laid out on the ground below the trees, and picnic and toast with sake to the same variety of cherry trees that were gifted Washington DC long ago, and which now enhance the Potomac River in spring splendor. 

Other colorful trees that have since turned native are the African tulip tree, whose red clusters rival those of the caballero, and the tiger claw, also reddish orange but not quite primed to bloom in the city. Some specimens alongside Vargas and Greenmeadows Avenues contracted a disease a couple of years back, and were put out of their misery.

Then of course there are our prolific bougainvillea, which flower all year round, but gain more riotous tropical abandon at the height of our summer. Recently I spotted new hybrids in pots at the Tiendesitas garden section. The green leaves were darker and smaller, even those of the Mary Palmer variety. They came from Bangkok, but naturally, as the Thais seem to have beaten us to a hybridization spree. But these more compact editions cost an arm and half a leg.

I’d rather stick to our local variety, and flash back to memories of the bougainvillea-lined roads in the Ilocos. Just as I’ll always remember a stretch in Calatagan where the roadside reeks of caballero and Golden Shower. Off Siaton in Negros Oriental, and in the provincial road past the Sarangani Capitol, flame trees take pride of place and time. In a plaza in Baler, Aurora province, the giant caballeros are of a variety that doesn’t wait up for May and June before dressing up for a drop-dead show. Shades of Bali.

Ah, Maytime. On the 19th this month, Camille de la Rosa, painter of churches and gardens, puts up her nth exhibit at the 1/OF Gallery in Serendra, The Fort, with Sen. Edgar Angara as guest of honor. Soon she’ll visit his Nasugbu farm to document the exotic foliage and animals he cultivates and propagates.

For this show, the young Camille will display at least 18 recent paintings, of gardens she’s visited in the past few months, from the Gruga Park in Essen, Germany, to the Orchidarium at Kuala Lumpur, and here, the bougainvillea-dominated gardens of Subic, Verde Island in Batangas, and Boracay.

Ah, Maytime. Yesterday was the birth anniversary of our beloved Nick Joaquin. To honor his memory, theater director Ricardo Abad stages an Alberto Florentino one-act play adaptation of Nick’s classic short story “May Day Eve” at the Rizal Mini Theater in the Loyola Schools, Ateneo de Manila University.

Showtime for the English version is at 6:30 p.m. from May 7 to 10, while the Filipino translation by Jerry Respeto, titled “Salamin... Salamin... Isang Gabi ng Mayo,” goes onstage at the same hour from May 14 to 17. Matinees are presented at 3 p.m. on May 10 and 17. An open forum follows the hour-long play. 

The cast includes Bodgie Pascua, Nadi Xavier, Naty Crame Rogers, Gelo Brillante, Ysabel Yuzon, and the Tanghalang Ateneo Ensemble. Production design is by Gino Gonzales, lights design by Voltaire de Jesus, choreography by Matthew Santamaria, and sounds design by Lester Abuel.  

Now in its 30th year, Tanghalang Ateneo invites everyone to enjoy this summer cultural treat. Ticket prices are P150 each. For information, contact Janelle Mupas at 0915-6410911 or Ia Solis at 0916-5415165.

Come early, before sundown, so you can have another treat: the sight of flame trees in bloom in the best university campus in our country. Then you can say that you’ve gloried, in May, in the view from the hill.