The secret garden

She was featured in a book on silence, but it is not silence that surrounds her; it is serenity.

It is not silent where Tita Fely–actually my friend Ruy’s Tita Fely; I simply tagged along on the visit–lives, up in the hills of Antipolo. There is a bustling, busy world around her, not of commerce or human activity but a world of flora and fauna and the sounds they make are a constant symphony.

Unless you knew exactly where you were going you would not think of going up there. The road, though cemented, is very steep, and you turn into what used to be, many years and many memories ago, the Antipolo Hotel. You go through the abandoned driveway and, if you pay attention, you will see a wrought iron gate off to one side and beyond that, a house, almost as if it doesn’t want to be seen.

The first impulse is to say that she lives alone, but that isn’t quite right because she isn’t really alone. Mementoes and memories of the past 80 years of her life–if you’re thinking of a doddering, batty old lady, banish the thought: Tita Fely is spry and energetic, with a sharp wit, a mischievous sense of humor and very definite opinions about the current state of things (you should hear her characterization of some of our leaders, past and present)–share her home. Photographs of course, lots of them, including some colorized photos by the eminent Charles Miller of her mother’s prized orchids. Exquisite silverware and china, including the little plate and bowl she used as a baby (with nary a chip or a crack). And then there is the family tree, a masterpiece on manila paper that traces the Ycasiano family back to the early 1800s. She points out the branch of the family that descended from a priest (she thus pooh-poohs the current brouhaha over a bishop’s offspring), and challenges my friend to find his place in the upper branches of the tree.

But it is her garden that is probably Tita Fely’s secret elixir. Over 5,000 square meters of what some may call a jungle, the garden harbors wonderful groves of bamboo, tall as the sky and stout as an adult’s leg, that groan and creak as if in a horror movie. Fishtail palms and flowering kamuning grow like mushrooms, as well as bromeliads and native plants close to extinction that she searches for and propagates. If you keep your eyes on the ground, you will discover some really interesting plants, the names of which Tita Fely says she will have to look up in her reference book. Many of them were not planted but had just sprouted, their seeds carried over by birds perhaps, or by the wind.

The garden is on a very steep slope, and you must be light of feet to keep up with Tita Fely. Once she puts on her red rubber boots and gardener’s belt-pouch (a gift from a thoughtful grandchild) it’s not easy to keep up with her. Occasionally she will very kindly pause to inquire if you’re okay; naturally you say yes, and try to gasp for breath as quietly and inconspicuously as possible. There are steps–156 if I remember correctly, for which she paid a worker P12.50 per step–up to the top edge of the property, from which you can look down to the church and the town, if the grass on the other side of the fence is not too high.

Halfway up there is a thatched roof shelter, with a table and benches that must have been the site of many a happy picnic. The roof now needs to be repaired, but it is still a good spot to sit and enjoy the breeze, read a book or just listen to the whisper of the leaves when a breeze blows or the haunting but melodious creak of the bamboo or the different tones and tunes of birds and insects and other creatures of the not-so-wild.

We stop every so often to look at plants, and Tita Fely describes what the flowers look like, or relates where the plant came from, or gives valuable tips on plant care and garden wisdom. She is very generous with her wisdom, and her plants, sharing the abundance of her garden (I went home with some delightful specimens to add to my un-secret garden). There is still fruit on the santol trees, but no longer on the kaimitos. The lanzones are just beginning to bud, and she looks forward to the harvest–she told the fruit vendor she wanted the trees more than the fruit, and he obliged; this will be her first harvest from those trees–in a few months with delightful anticipation.

Down below, at the back of the house is a shed where she keeps her garden things. There are pots of all sizes, and the ingredients for a potting mix. She teaches me how to pot properly (she insists on doing this herself, because others do not have the patience to do it correctly)–first arranging pottery shards at the bottom, carefully like a jigsaw puzzle, then a layer of sand for drainage and moisture retention, then compost and soil, sometimes sawdust (but it must be old–very old–sawdust). There is charcoal too, containers for seedlings and an assortment of garden tools (the garden shears are kept in a drawer in the kitchen).

Nest to the house is a small greenhouse where she keeps a collection of ferns. She laments that debris from recent repair work on the house adversely affected many of the ferns. Up front there is a hammock, where my friend settled down with a book on the Mongols while we explored the garden. Tita Fely says that when she gets tired that is where she rests, but I figure that is not very often, as after more than an hour of taking me up and down and around her garden she is neither out of breath nor sweating, the gracious, lovely and serene mistress of a secret garden up in the hills of Antipolo.