GREEN Craftivist

Growing up in our ancestral home along Tilik Bay in Lubang Island gave me the rare opportunity to experience  nature on a daily basis - something which children from the city would only see and read in books and magazines or watch on television. What was it like to live and grow up by the sea? The sea was my classroom and playground where different species of marine life like starfishes, sea cucumbers, crustaceans, fishes, sea urchins,sea weeds among others abound.  During high tide, the shore turns into a gigantic swimming pool where I learned to swim using a dry bamboo pole or two dry coconuts tied together for my life saver. At low tide, the sea dries up into a vast expanse of land where we gathered sea shells called ‘ Sihi’  for our dinner soup matched with the slippery sea anemone which we broiled in bamboo sticks.  My best friend and I loved to walk up to Angggan -  the coral reef that marked the boundary between the dry land and the deep, blue sea - to gather  clams and watch

 Hi everyone!    After having worked for more than forty years in both government and corporate sectors, I decided to retire early in the middle of the pandemic to minimize exposure to the Covid19 virus and to spend more time with the family.  Before this and during the lockdown period, gardening - which has been my passion and stress reliever activity ever since - took up most of my un-worked hours and eventually of my new-found freedom. For this reason, I do not consider myself as a “ Plantita ” - a pandemic-born plant grower or enthusiast. I nevertheless became part of that huge population that got carried away with the “ Plantdemic ” surge. I aim to share with you some home-grown gardening tips and ideas, related recycling projects that contribute to greening the environment and waste reduction which I saw from my travels both local and international, art and photography works that support these, as well as relevant life lessons I picked up in my journey as a child, wife, mother an