Kapok Season in a Few Days

The bagras trees were planted onto the amphitheater steps

The amphitheater out the classroom window

Quick Post: I was having class yesterday in Building 1.  It was a drawing studio class so when my students were doing their drawing plates, I noticed that the natural light was nice in the college's amphitheater.  The bagras (Eucalyptus deglupta) trees the faculty planted several years ago are reaching about 8 meters in height or more.  But still towering over them is the sole kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra) which is about to wreak its fruiting havoc in a few days.  The heavily fruit-burdened branches will release the snow like fibers attached to the wannabe-airborne kapok seeds.  It is like snow,  a spectacle to see - but will be quite detrimental to ones having asthma.  Soon the whole college floor will be teeming with the fluffy kapok fibers. Time to bring out my again fashionable face mask. 

The impending asthma danger that is the kapok fruits

Marketing at Munoz Market

A sort of telescope or cone shell which I was surprised was edible, but I was not adventurous 

Seaweeds, sometimes called
 lato or ararusip  

Alamang, looks like we will be
our own  bagoong

Ever since I transferred houses, it has been quite a while since I visited Munoz Market.  I love going there just to buy a few fish and seafood items as our new neighborhood talipapa has limited fare.  Today a Wednesday, it looks like seafood abound despite being the middle of the week. I found some unusual shellfish but was afraid to try, so we stuck it out with the usual suspects, tulingan, squid and tahong.

Fare in the veggie section e in the veggie section

The worm-like alukon

Alukon in pinakbet

On the other side of the seafood section was the vegetables area.  In the sea of common produce I found some kadios and alukon.  I do not remember anymore what month alukon usually comes out, as alukon is the male flowers of the himbabao tree or Broussonetia luzonica, and it has a flowering season.  What I could remember though is how closely it resembles cauliflower in taste.  When I first tasted alukon, it was cooked in the austere-reputed  dish  diningding (did I say that right, Ilocanos?).  

I missed eating baked tahong!

We cooked alukon tonight before it dries up or wilt completely. We also prepared the tahong two ways, in curry and baked with a little butter.   I would also have to find a good recipe without pork to cook the kadios in the next few days. Any suggestions? I would have liked it the Negrosense way with pork in soy sauce but would have to stick to the healthy diet.  

Yakal in the Outdoors

Kopsia flowers on  30 year aged yakal wood

Newer pieces that are about 2 to 5 years in age 

Quick Post: I was told that for outdoor use, the wood of choice would either be yakal, guijo or molave.  I have seen molave wood a lot of times before having that yellow tinge. But it would also sport knots which give it character. I have not seen either yakal or guijo before. 

Recently I was sent file pictures of how yakal would look like when used as decking material.  It is harder to find  new yakal wood nowadays so the pictures sent were of lumber from an old house that was reworked into a 7 year old deck. But a few were said to be replaced recently with newer pieces showing us how a 20 or so year old yakal wood compare to a 5 year old one. 

Picture of new and old yakal wood juxtaposed with each other

Chi's Birthday Lunch in a Farm

Fresh sweet tuba

Our 'healthy' lunch 

It has been long since I saw my architect friend Chi Victorino.  Last weekend I joined her to visit a private farm in Cavite (near Tagaytay) - which was sort of her birthday lunch.  The owners, which were her friends, hosted us and prepared a sumptuous semi-healthy meal for us which memorably included a gracious serving of fresh tuba.  I am not sure if the pork and the vegetables served were produced in the farm.  But what I heard from our hosts is that the tuba came from coconuts growing within the premises.  The tuba was extracted the day before and was sweeter than any I have tasted. Our lunch was capped off with a surprise birthday cake for Chi, which had a single lit candle (not hinting how old Chi was).  Chi was all in smiles while trying to blow the sole cake candle. 

The newly born native pigs are quite adorable

The piglets wanted the attention

After lunch our hosts, Sir Eric and Mam Des, toured me around their farm as it was my first time there (Chi had been there several times before). They showed us the native pigs growing in their well built pens - which I found adorable (the numerous small piglets were quite cute and endearing).  Mam Des was telling me that the native pigs were not as smelly to keep compared to the domesticated pink-colored kind we see commercially.  They amazingly deposit their 'poop' into one corner of the pen. They also were quite easy to feed as they are 'vegetarians', eating mostly produce and discards - which are harvested around the farm. 

The straight mahogany path

An old fruiting kapa-kapa or Medinilla magnifica 

What was nice to discover is that the farm approximated a forest look.  Yes there were mahogany trees and norfolk pine all over, which was planted more than 10 years ago (before the owners knew about native trees). But in corners where they had existing native trees like tibig, bangkal and pagsahingan, they planted these areas with more natives like kayumanis, lipote, batwan, tabon-tabon and  a whole lot more.

Jade vine is quite at home to bloom

I seem to be rusty taking tree pictures. When I reached home, I found out that instead of taking pics of the farm and the native trees, I snapped at pics of the mahogany tree path and flowers. But at least I got to take shots of a few natives in bloom which were protected when they built the structures. Hopefully when I make my succeeding blog posts I could get into the groove of taking nicer native tree photos.   

    

10th year?...

Last week I gave a lecture on Philippine native trees for urban landscaping.   I was introduced as architect, assistant professor, gardener and blogger.  When I heard it I realized that I have not been doing at least one of these things I was referred to as. Blogger resonated the most as I have been absent doing this blog for a year.

In the Philippine Native Tree Enthusiast page over at Facebook, someone mentioned about pioneer bloggers writing about native trees.  I was tagged in the post and the comment stated that my blog was third to write about Philippine trees, after Rey Sioson and Tristan Asuncion.  Tristan however pointed out that my blog came first before Rey's and his, which made me check how many years I have been blogging about plants in general.  I checked my logs here in this site.

I have been blogging about plants in multiply.com for the longest.  But it was in 2008 that I transferred writing here at www.pinoytrees.blogspot.com.  I regret that I lost my numerous posts in multiply as the site has already shut down.  I did not get the chance to retrieve them.  But pondering on what I have here on blogspot I have nearing 500 posts about trees and some other stuff about Philippine culture.  What I also realized is that on my 10th year on blogspot, I stopped doing the blogging.  Sadly even Rey Sioson and Tristan Asuncion did so too.

I left 2018, my supposedly10th year in blogging about Philippine native trees with no posts, no celebrated milestones. I have actually left writing about anything completely.  This I regret as I remembered enjoying saying things about a lot of things, and honestly I still feel I have a lot of things to tell.

So officially I am rekindling my love to write and I am signifying another chapter in blogging about trees in this site.  I hope that you would stick around reading my musings.  I promise that if you do there will be more stuff about Philippine flora to come.

The Return of my 80's Robot Toys

Daimos is one of the more popular robots in our time

Some time ago I was looking through Facebook when one of the online posts caught my attention. It was an old robot for sale which looked very familiar to me, a child of the 1980's.  It was Gaiking. Though the robot never got any local airtime in the 1980's, most of us Gen X'ers would be familiar to it as toys were available in select shops in Manila. 

I myself remember getting a shogun warrior version of Gaiking in the old Anding's toy store in Tabora Street in Divisoria and everytime I would go to Central Market, Cartimar and Zurvaran I would swoon over the toy displays of Voltes V, Mazinger Z, UFO Grendizer and Getter Robot (which I thought was named Geta Robot).  My mother, who was very frugal, only got to buy me a handful of this.  I remember getting the first series of the Shogun Warriors including Getter Dragon, Grendizer, Getter Poseidon, Gaiking and Combattler (which I thought was named Combatra 5). I got each one of them on different occasions through my childhood years.  I wanted to get the very nice 'voltable' Voltes V. but of course I figured my mom will not part with the whopping 500 pesos for all 5 Voltes V vehicles (100 pesos each in Cartimar circa 1981). 

The shogun warriors were sold cheap at 25 pesos each, that is why it was more reasonable for me to ask for all five of them. I wore those die-cast toys out till the plastic joints broke off.  I even asked our maid to drive nails onto the plastic parts to replace the broken joints just to make them look whole again. I recalled also getting a larger die-cast Getter Leiger for one birthday, a plastic Macross-Gerwalk and a plastic doll knock-off of Getter One (similar to the vinyl versions of the robot) made in China. Then my obsession for them was abandoned in favor of Lego and Playmobil.  

I remember I had the shogun warrior versions of this robot trio 

When I saw the Facebook post, I clicked on the details and next thing I knew I purchased the Gaiking. That was months ago.  Today I am looking at my new Gaiking, I have it on a shelf in my bedroom. And it is already alongside a few more robots of my childhood like Mazinger Z, Getter and Daimos.  I still could not afford Voltes V though (which is now far more expensive than its original 500 pesos price).  I myself got the robots at a much higher price than the 25 pesos they were in my childhood. But these ones will be there for me to appreciate visually and would not be probably worn out by play.  I know my childhood toys were much worth the price they were paid for but I would have to contend myself looking at these ones to remind me of my childhood robot memories.

Gaiking on the far end is now in company with my Mazinger Z collection.

Cariton Caravan

Saw this cariton caravan along Visayas Avenue

The caravan fare of native household items

Quick Post: I have not seen a buffalo caravan for quite sometime.  When I started my masteral degree back in 2005 I still notice a few of them parking near UP on Commonwealth Avenue.  The caravan leaders were letting the buffalos graze on the grass growing on roadside.  Now I don't see them anymore.

A few days ago I saw this cariton caravan on Visayas Avenue.  Are the buffalo caravans  completely a thing of the past? I sure hope not, though these cariton caravans seem to carry all the items sold by the original animal caravan, with some new additions of course.