Black bamboo and other delights

Over a quarter of a century it’s been since I received a gift of black bamboo from China. (Oh, I just love these recollections that span more than a generation. Believe it or not, it came from a young Imee Marcos, who had just come back from what we used to call “Mainland” or “Communist” China — maybe to follow up on our so-called basketball diplomacy initiated by her dad with the help of Rosalio “Yongyong” Martires et al.

Well, these days Yongyong still serves as our vice mayor in Pasig City, on his nth term I think. And dear Imee, former Congressperson, is now governor of Ilocos Norte. I hope we’ll eventually see towering stands of black bamboo all over that northern coastline, framing those picturesque modern windmills erected by her brother as a Dutch treat.

In any case, it was in the early 1980s when Imee said she could give me some specimens of black bamboo for me to grow, since she knew I liked all kinds of grass. But that I’d have to pick them up in Baguio City. So I did; the shoots were still kinda short, but very much alive. For some reason, I decided not to take them home with me to Quezon City. Maybe I got typically inebriated or drugged or both one evening at Cafe Amapola on Session Road, and anthropologist David Baradas sweet-talked me into leaving the imported bamboo in his care.  

But that’s what happened. And I never did get to see those darling shoots again. Pity. Many years later, BenCab showed me some black bamboo in his first garden in Baguio. I’m not sure now if I recollect correctly that the artist (oh, make that National) had mentioned that he got his first shoots from Dave. Maybe he did. Which reminds me: I should ask him if he had transplanted his black bamboo to his nice little spread on Asin Road, where he’s one-upped Dr. Baradas by building his own museum. 

Really now, the prob with those of us who aren’t landed gentry, or who have no concerns regarding having to give in to land reform, is that if we love growing things, we’re fated to set them up in pots that grow larger and larger, or, well, in little side gardens that can’t host a durian or Palawan cherry tree.

This artist-friend of mine, Monching Cruz who’s also a publisher, resolves this conundrum by having his bamboo grow on really large, rectangular cement boxes, which adorn his driveway in UP Village. Sometime last year we worked together on the Ateneo Centennial coffee-table book. I told him I owed it to the university to offer my otherwise euro-rate editorial services gratis. But of course, Pinoys being Pinoys, apart from the free lunches I had at his place (great tinolang manok and wonderfully fragrant and flavorful milagrosa rice), I also came away with a framed nude (female) sketch done by Monching, and black bamboo shoots, living!

I placed the earth-wrapped bundle in a large pot which I then stood up on the corner of a concrete plant box that got full morning sun. I had no yard space left at all to envision husbanding or mothering a thick clump of bamboo in a few years’ time. The pair of thin dark poles soon rewarded me with suhi, which shot up straight, to all of six feet in two months’ time. Then another. And another. The third suhi seemed trapped near the pot’s side. True enough, it stopped growing and dried up. Another that shot up around the same small area also got aborted. That told me I needed a larger vessel.

I kept trying to conceive of a way where I could get the largest non-concrete pot I could, and still standing it on that same plant box corner, maybe add more support outside the box, by using hollow blocks. But a neighbor likes to park his car so close to the concrete box that’s filled with false birds of paradise. And me being Christian when it comes to parking etiquette, I even made sure someone getting off from his passenger seat wouldn’t have to stoop low to avoid getting her hair entangled with my black bamboo leaves. They’re pretty sharp-edged, too.

The tallest pole has grown to about eight feet tall, its top leaves scraping the underside of one son’s balcony. Another, slightly shorter pole began to curve above the false birds of paradise, weighed down by its top leaves. On an opposite corner of our townhouse’s backside, sitting atop the end of a tiny pond, is another, similar-sized pot with similarly fledgling Tiger bamboo — this one a keepsake from poet-friend Marj Evasco, dug up from her own small garden in the Hagdang Bato enclave in Mandaluyong. 

Every morning I’d personally water these two large pots, and take pains to pluck off yellowed leaves. Also to keep rearranging the growing shoots, tying them up a certain way so the neighbors could get in and out of their car with nary a horticultural scratch.

Well, last week I bit the bullet. I bought a machete made in Brazil, Tramontina brand, sharp and cheap at P279.75 at the Ace hardware shop. No, I didn’t conduct a chop-chop operation with my brand-new itak on the neighbor’s car. I trained my sights, and biceps (a la Nadal, bare off a muscle tee) on a couple of stands of wild foliage growing on another side garden across a public driveway in our Kaimitoville haven.

This commons of a garden plot I get to view sideways from my work table, clear through side glass doors that open, and across that egress road for those living behind our townhouse. I had long wanted to take over that plot, turn it into a creative commons in keeping with my copy-left, piratical tendencies. Oops.

A year ago I transplanted two kinds of heliconia on that longitudinal plot bounded by a red brick wall: parrot’s beak and lobster claw. The clumps have taken so long to thrive, unlike in my original garden. I figured the soil was too poor, which accounted for the hardscrabble quality of the greenery there, including the common Fortune plant and some malunggay stalks a village hand had seen fit to impale on the hard ground quite recently. 

The rainy season has softened the ground. Our side-garden hose can reach it, too. Last Wednesday, balmy weather and a couple of hours of free time in the afternoon finally allowed me to make the big move. I hacked off the tall stands of ordinary foliage, then thrust the pointed end of my Andy Varejao machete deep into the root balls of offending foliage and pulled them out, until I had created spaces for my two kinds of bamboo. Oh, okay, so my driver helped out in digging the second hole. But believe me, I didn’t call for him; he just got inggit with what he must have surmised was my creative commons exercise, and volunteered a hand. 

So now my black bamboo and Tiger bamboo are growing a few meters apart in that plot. I figure they’ll now stretch out to full height, which can be a cool 20 feet, and look great against the backdrop of red brick. And if either one over-develops to concern the village Admin honchos, why, it should be easy to uproot fresh culms and grow them in pots again, for giving out to friends with black thumbs.

I’m happy and contented now with the fate of those bamboos. The black variety may still seem indistinct, but already one of its older poles is indeed turning dark, from the earlier green color of its stalk. And both are getting doses of partial morning sun and nearly full afternoon sun. As the heliotropic cycle shifts, per our planet’s orbit around Old Sol, perihelion to aphelion and back, by summer next year they should be getting full morning sun with all the Vitamin C, and only partial afternoon UV rays.

That’s how one speaks only when gardening efforts are sort of mitigated by surrounding buildings. The idyllic lebensraum is still out there in open space, such as at The Fort or Bonifacio Global City, where I can only envy the landscape master planners.

But hey, I’ve befriended Tony Boy Cojuangco’s personal gardener for his FVR Park baby that now houses an arts center at The Fort. And I told Master Yuyung Lao that I had a pair of Palawan cherry trees grown from seeds I gathered on a visit to Calauit Island early last year. Out of hundreds of seeds from several long rattling pods, two staked a claim to existence. And they were outgrowing my largest pots placed by the side of a guardhouse for full morning sun.

Could I donate them to FVR Park, so that in five to ten years another kind of resplendent blossoms — shocking pink! — are seen amidst all the gorgeously blooming flame trees of late summer?

Yuyung said yes, of course, he’d take care of them. That was two months ago. I should’ve taken him up on it ASAP. A month passed and one of the saplings inexplicably dried up. I suspect that a cyclist who loves to park his motorbike close to the guardhouse must have relieved himself in criminal fashion one dark night. And alas, flooded that one pot with too much nitrogen. I’ve since contributed more than the usual village fees for the installation of CCTV monitors around my potted greens.

Well, also last week, I found time to curl up those Palawan cherry tree branches and leaves inside the trusty Vios, texted Yuyung that the single tree donation was on its way, and personally delivered my four-foot-tall, 18-month baby straight into the earth-enamored hands of Yuyung’s assistant.

Yuyung assured me by text that he’d find a great spot for it, and care for it until it stabilized in all that open, sunlit space, if in the midst of other trees. 

So in the next decade or two, and beyond, if you drive past 26th Street at Boni Glo City and marvel at pink sakura flowers staying longer on the bough than Tokyo’s or Washington D.C.’s all-too-ephemeral splendor, you can bet that that’s my Palawan cherry tree, nicknamed Pepito, that’s commanding your sense of marvel.

I’ll check on it weekly. Meanwhile, the black bamboo I’ll worship and water daily, and urge to get into dunking vantage soon. The next project is the transplant of a Brazilian annatto (achuete, but with fire-red seedpod clusters) I also grew from seed. That seed came from the garden of then Palawan Governor Joel Reyes’ — at his Puerto Princesa residence. Thank the sun god for once and future governors. Somehow they bring out my caring hand of governance — over all things bright and beautiful, inclusive of the red and black.