The Joy of Gardening

I used to see gardening as a chore. I tried planting a couple of times before. Even bought plants from Tagaytay to take care of, but the few that survived had to be put under my Mom's care. She has a green thumb.

Started to plant again last month during the labor day weekend. It was just an experiment to see if anything I plant would grow. It did and I realized that I had to take taking care of my plants properly. I enjoy researching to learn more about taking care of my plants. I've been smothering them with attention everyday.

At my balcony "farm" before the sprouts started growing like crazy.

I re-potted some of my tomato plants last night. They're about a month old now and are growing really fast. Just before I went to bed I realized that we can all be self-sufficient if we wanted to. In the old days most houses had backyards where you could plant vegetables and take care of chickens. My Mom has a huge backyard and we had fruit trees, veggies and chickens. Now I wish I had that space and easy access to gardening supplies.

The tomato forest needed to be re-potted.

I've been thinking about where I want to be when I go home. We have a home in Manila which has two balconies and I've finally found a reason to interact more with my neighbors. The recently created our community gardening group and I'm so glad I joined. I've been learning a lot from my neighbors and they've been inspiring me to think about what to do with our balcony.

Now I understand why my Mom spends so many hours in her garden. Her plants have been giving her so much joy. I guess my previous attempts at gardening did not work out because I wasn't ready. It's only been a month since I started cultivating my balcony farm. Read more about my gardening adventures at "The Balcony Farmer". I have friends who told me they got inspired with my efforts and started gardening too!


#CB/61 #StuckAtHomeDay91 #StayHome #BeKind

What the World Needs Now

Jackie DeShannon made popular this beautiful song -

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It's the only thing that there's just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love,
No not just for some but for everyone.

2020 so far hasn't been kind to us. It's mantra is to wreak terror at every point. Honestly I've been afraid to read the news because of all the bad things happening. I do read the news and there's a lot of things happening I do not agree with. Earlier today I saw an old man shoved by a policeman. He fell down on the pavement. When someone tried to help him, a policeman stopped him. The old man was bleeding on the ground.

I asked myself, "Have we forgotten to be nice?" Have we forgotten the golden rule?

The last few months have really been hard on all of us. We all cope differently. I struggle a lot more especially when I'm unwell, but I always remind myself to try to be kind. I'm not perfect and there's probably times when I've offended people. I try to be extra mindful because I've been on the other end of outbursts and being treated unfairly.

There is a Filipino saying, "Kapag binato ka ng bato, batuhin mo ng tinapay" (If someone throws a rock at you, throw back bread). It basically means, if someone treats you unfairly, treat them with kindness. I experienced something terrible yesterday. It was so traumatic I wanted to hurt back. I ended up crying most of the day because it was really so hard to be at peace. I am so lucky I have guardian angels who look after me. Thank you guys.

Which brings me back to Jackie DeShannon's song, "What the World Needs Now is Love". My prayer is for everyone (including me) to remember to always be kind. Maybe then we can help make the world a better place.


#CB/60 #WFH47  #StuckAtHomeDay90 #StayHome #BeKind

Peaceful in Penang

I've been to Penang twice. Once for work and then another time for a weekend vacay with family.

We decided to stay by the beach during our weekend vacation. I normally plan the flights and accommodation and then leave the tour itinerary to the boys. Normally when we travel we plan to visit just one place per day and then chill in the hotel the rest of the day.

Our first night we decided to walk around the area and check out the Batu Feringghi Night Market. We eventually got hungry and ended up at a seafood place where we had the freshest, yummiest food. We also got the perfect table just a stone's throw away from the sea. We were so full we decided to walk back to the hotel.

Georgetown was quite far from the beach area, we headed there just to roam around and show Miggy around. We ended up at Straits Quay Marina Mall as recommended by my friend Amir. In a previous trip Sweetie and I were able to visit the Ghost Museum which had a lot of nice stuff. It wasn't scary though.

We also ended up visiting the Muzium Negeri Pulau Pinang. We tried looking for the payment booth, but no one was around. The doors were open though and we got to roam around. That place definitely had spirits watching over it. The place was empty but we had a nagging feeling we were being watched so we didn't stay long.

It was a fun, but very short weekend for us. I now remember that we only stayed one night because we just wanted to check the area with Miggy. We didn't even have any check-in luggage! Ended up having to check in my Mom's sewing scissor! I forgot she had put it in my trolley bag when she left for Manila a few days before our trip. So that pair of scissors had an adventure before I got it back from the airline.

I hope someday we'd be able to visit again and explore more of Penang!


#CB59 #WFH46  #StuckAtHomeDay89 #StayHome #BeKind
#ThrowbackThursday 

PT Again! Yay!

I had physiotherapy today! My therapist pinged me the good news last week that they were re-opening after June 1. She asked me if I wanted to come in. The last time I had physiotherapy was on April 2.

Dreaming of swimming here soon.

To be honest, exercising at home is a huge challenge! It's just not in my system. I do mat exercises one to two times per week and I move around a lot at home. I'm like a kiti-kiti at home because I could surprisingly do three thousand steps just going around everyday. On weekends I do at least 4k because of chores, baking and cooking. I exercise so my back won't hurt again and to improve my breathing.

At my favorite shop - Spotlight!

My therapist is super challenged with taking care of me. What she asks me to do has to be a perfect balance between challenging and bearable. If I have too much I get sick immediately. Tomorrow I will have to update her whether the exercises we did today was okay. I'll have to work my way up again in the next few weeks. I hope that the pool will open soon so I can swim and strengthen my lungs more.

What about you? What do you do to keep active at home? I never saw my Mom exercise in my entire life. Her secret to keeping fit is gardening. Tending to her garden is a lot of work. There were times when she traveled she would leave her garden to me. I had to water the entire garden twice a day. I used to have a garden in a previous home. I tried doing what my Mom would do twice a day - "putter around the garden". Gardening for fifteen minutes in my balcony now makes me feel like I had two hours of physiotherapy haha. So I count that as exercise hahaha.


#CB58 #WFH45  #StuckAtHomeDay88 #StayHome #BeKind 

Happiness in Half a Kilo of Lechon

Today is the first day of phase 1 of the safe-reopening of Singapore. It was an important day for us since we finally got all our stuff out of our old apartment. We also turned over our keys. Now we just need to wait to get back our deposit (minus cleaning expenses). It's the end of an era for our life here in Singapore.

I finally found someone who adopted our microwave oven. Originally wanted to give it to my seatmate, David, but he said his landlord does not allow cooking in his place. It's my good friend Cathy who opened her home to our microwave oven. It was perfect timing so I sent the microwave oven to her via Grab this afternoon. She traded it with lechon (it's actually her belated birthday celebration)!

Harbourfront era, the end.

This is one of the longest times I haven't been home (more than 5 months now!). The lechon was heaven sent (thanks Cathy and Mike!). Luckily I ordered some atsara two weeks ago and it matched perfectly. We had to keep active for awhile after dinner to let the food digest better (haha) and we skipped dessert! (We only ate half of the container!).

I think I'll remember this day for a long time. Thanks again Cathy and Mike :)

#CB57   #StuckAtHomeDay87 #StayHome #BeKind 

Mood Mondays

I thought I'd put some order to my blogging so I don't end up just blabbing away here. So for Mondays I thought I'd just allot this day to blog about the general mood for the week.

Today is the last day of the Singapore circuit breaker. I think with all lockdowns/quarantines/whatever you call it went through different phases. Ours here became stricter right after we moved to our new place. The easement back to normal will go through several phases also and the general guideline is for those working from home to just continue working from home.

I've accepted the fact that I'm not going anywhere anytime soon and I have adjusted to a new normal. I've been home for 87 days now and only go out for essential stuff. Essential stuff has just been my doctor visits and urgent stuff we needed to fix related to our move.

At this point I think the only thing I miss most is the ability to hug Miggy and my Mom. Everything else I can do online. I love going to the supermarket and rarely ordered groceries online before. We didn't have enough supplies when we moved so I did groceries weekly for the first few weeks. Now I only order what I need. We used to eat out at least once or twice a week, but we always preferred to just buy take-away and just eat at home.

The new normal allowed me to explore other things. Gardening, baking bread and work on my quilt projects. I've also made two photobooks now and waiting for the second one to arrive. No travel means I have the chance to finally blog about all my travels the last ten years (yes! I have a 10-year blog backlog!). Of course also more time to reach out to family and friends and see what they're up to.

Meet Mr. Mustasa. I'm so excited to see it grow!

This pandemic is hard for everyone and we have different ways to cope. I've had to manage my stress better because the <3 complained a few weeks ago. That really scared me and I followed my doctor's instructions closely. I realized I cannot be of service to others if I'm not well. I had to really impose a hard stop everyday so I can have enough time to rest and re-load my happiness tank. 

How about you? How are you? What is keeping you happy nowadays?

#CB56 #WFH44  #StuckAtHomeDay86 #StayHome #BeKind #MoodMondays

Tried Baking Ensaymada, Challenging Siya!

So I've started to tick off the list of Pinoy breads I'd like to learn how to bake. I read that pandesal is tough to bake so I thought I'd try something else first. I decided on ensaymada because I love this sweet, cheesy bread. I chose the "panaderia" version and not the soft, fluffy one that commercial bakeries make.

Ensaymada is my second attempt at baking bread. My first attempt was dinner rolls. I'm glad I started with dinner rolls because I figured it would be easy and fool-proof. Baking ensaymada was quite challenging. I only started getting the set-up right on the second pan. The sizes of the bread came out all different since I don't have a kitchen scale yet. I'll probably buy more baking stuff when I feel like I'm going to do this every week (maybe after I bake one more bread).

It took me most of the day to bake the ensaymada. I always finish just before dinner haha. We gobbled up a few and left the rest for breakfast the next day. Here's a vlog on my first attempt at baking ensaymada -

Next on my list is Spanish bread!


#CB55  #StuckAtHomeDay86 #StayHome #BeKind #SentiSabado