Tugas and Mabolo

I am not particularly suspicious. While many of us attach some significance to repeated occurrences of seemingly unrelated events, I dismiss them as purely coincidental. Even then, I cannot help but notice that in the last weeks of 2019, I came across the idea of planting trees, particularly Tugas and Mabolo species.

Here are the first two. In mid-November last year, Mr. Antonio Atamosa, out of the abundance of his goodness, gifted me with about 100 Tugas seedlings. I immediately transferred these from small plastic seed bags to bigger containers filled with loam soil mixed with carabao and horse manure. Upon my receipt, the Tugas seedlings were just about three inches high and understandably frail. Towards the end of December, Mr. Atamosa again gave about one hundred Tugas seedlings. I was quite excited with the second prospect of having new young trees to nurture and was particularly upbeat to show him the first batch, now about 8-10 inches tall already.

Here is the third. Bogo City officials, in their desire to meet some of the criteria in the Seal of Good Governance (SGLG) from the Department of the Interior and Local Government, contracted me for its codification project. One such code was the Environmental Management Code. In our meetings with City Council secretary Maita Labrado, she wanted to embellish that code with provisions on planting of trees. We talked about requiring city residents to plant and grow Tugas and Mabolo more than any other species in certain locations.

Here is the fourth time I came across the idea of tree planting. The officials of Catigbian, of my birth province of Bohol, wanted their own Environment Code written out of its many separate ordinances. This was the document singled out as still lacking by the DILG when the town got its SGLG last year. We had, in the third week of December, a serious discussion on the matter with council secretary Ardissa Estavilla. While Catigbian passed some ordinances requiring its residents to plant trees, these are limited in scope. Estavilla echoed the plan to expand the scope. They are particularly interested in Tugas and Mabolo.

In my small parcel of land in Barangay Paril, I have planting trees. These past several years, I planted Mabolo, Tugas, and other fruit trees. These young Tugas plants given by Mr. Atamosa, together with about 50 I’m nurturing at home, are destined for Paril too when they shall be five feet tall already. For two Saturdays last December, I hired some people to clean every growing Tugas and Mabolo. In fact, I’m entertaining the thought of calling my small piece of land in Paril as Matunaba short for Mabolo, Tugas, Narra, and bato.

Also last year, I wrote in this column my perception on the program of Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella to plant three million trees in his term. I was ecstatic to envision millions of trees growing on some parched areas of the city although I raised the opinion that the plan might not have been carefully conceived. It was ill-advised of the mayor to announce that in his first year as our chief executive he could cover our city with one million trees. I gave some mathematical calculations to support my view. I succeeded to touch sensitive nerves in the process.

I am an incorrigible optimist. I consider the number of times I came across the idea of planting trees these several past weeks as a good sign. Who knows Mayor Labella might just succeed in his greening program.