Random Thoughts 3-2-07

Donna and I were working on the lawn this morning when I suddenly realized I don’t know what day it was! I quickly grabbed my cell to check. It’s already Friday! Well, like they say, how time flies when you’re having fun!

Time flies but now we have more time to literally stop and smell the roses and appreciate a sunset.

Like the way I noticed that my chico tree has sprouted some flowers. When we first got it, it had buds but they fell off as soon as I planted it on the ground.


My lone banana blossom has gotten quite small now shedding its petals as the days go by. Unfortunately, it’s a decorative variety so it doesn’t bear any fruits.

We had quite a bit of fruit trees in our old house in Norwalk. My father-in-law even planted a grapevine by the carport in front of our garage. I remembered it had the smallest and most sour of grapes but he still enjoys watching these inedible fruits. Our apple trees and oranges weren’t too bad though. The avocados gave us more than we can eat and don’t even get me started on our guava tree by the driveway. At that time I can’t really figure out why anyone would bother planting fruit bearing trees when anybody can get them at the local supermarket and they’re pretty affordable, even cheap when they’re on sale. On the other hand, when he visited (right before he passed away) my father could not comprehend why anybody would want to plant a tree that would not bear fruit, thinking that’s such a waste of energy. I still remember him standing by our tangerine tree just staring at it with its branches close to breaking due to the numerous fruits it had at the time.

Now I understand how he and my father-in-law had felt. I look at some of my plants and worry that they don’t have as many flowers. Am I watering them enough or too much? I can’t explain the sense of joy I felt the first time I noticed my banana blossom sprouting.



I guess with our situation, we now have time to notice the mundane, things that we’ve taken for granted in the past.

I use a pair of garden shears to cut my grass. Since we’re leaving in a few weeks I figured I’ll cut it short enough so it won’t need cutting for a while. It’s gotten so thick and spongy that I imagine shepherds shearing wool from sheep on those shows on public TV.

When we lived in the States, most of our friends make comments about the abundance and affordability of food in the land of plenty. Now that we live here, I think it’s almost sacrilegious to throw food away or let it go bad with so many poor people going hungry every day. So whenever we have some leftover, we either take it to the barrio or have Cindy, our cleaning lady, take it home. She’s a single Mom with five kids working as a supply clerk in a hospital earning P170 a day! Donna has her come in anytime she has a day off or in the afternoon when she works the morning shift.

We were walking one morning and we saw the cashew trees in the neighborhood starting to have ripe fruits.


One of our walking buddies had me shake one of the branches and three pieces of fruit fell. He picked them up and handed them to me. I was surprised on how juicy they were. I had one that day and it tasted much sweeter which is way different from the way I remembered cashews tasted when I was young in the barrio.

Then I realized that as a young boy, we really didn’t know we were picking fruits that are not ripe.



It’s Friday today so no chicken or meat of any kind. Yum, good for me, it will either be Sushi-Ya or Hanami! The latter being our new found Japanese restaurant in Angeles by Clark. Rachel’s cousin took them there for dinner when they were here last December. Their sashimi is of much better quality and bigger cuts albeit a tad more expensive.