Gardening

When I learned that my good friend and colleague Rich King also liked gardening, I knew I wasn't alone. After doing chemotherapy, Rich would lull himself to sleep by watching YouTube videos of plants and herbs (see the channel, Garden Answer—thanks, Rich!). This seems to agree with him—a quiet, peaceful hobby, perfect for introversion. I told him that I like watching Monty Don's Big Dreams, Small Spaces in Netflix, a show where ordinary people transform what little patch of land they have into the garden of their dreams. The gardens don't always turn out well—an episode showed the creation of a pond that looked like a toilet bowl—but one appreciates the effort and drama.

Gardening and plants. This botanical fascination creeps on us as move into our thirties, when we are more stable, perhaps more certain of our place under the sun. As a kid, I took a liking to botany. Having learned about monocots and dicots, I carved out a special place in our backyard and planted corn (monocot) and munggo (dicot). I tried out fertilizers, decomposed dried leaves, and was mostly impatient that things would speed up.

Recently, my good friend Kuya Imay, also the best insurance adviser in the world, sent me photos of his vegetable garden in Nabunturan, Compostela Valley. I asked permission to share these here. What a relaxing sight, indeed!