Convert your backyard into a multi-purpose garden

Convert your backyard into a multi-purpose garden
Dr Abe V Rotor 

By size, my home farm is a Liliputian version of a corporate farm. Intensive cultivation-wise however, it dwarfs the monoculture of a plantation. It is only when your area is small that you can attend to the requirements of an integrated farm with basic features of a garden.

Our children grew up with a garden at home.

When I moved to the city, I set aside a corner lot equivalent to a space of a two-bedroom bungalow. Here, after two years of experimentation and redesigning a city home garden evolved - a miniature version of tri-commodity farming where I have vegetables and fruits, chicken and hito.

My wife, who is an accountant, estimates that presently, the garden could save up to 20 percent of our family’s expense for food, in exchange for twenty family man-hours every week. Labor makes up to 50 percent of production costs, she says. Since gardening is a hobby in lieu of outdoor games, we agreed not to include labor as cost. This gives a positive sign to the garden’s financial picture.

We do not also consider in the book the aesthetic value of weekends when the garden becomes a family workshop to prove green thumbs, and gainful influence my family has made on the community, such as giving free seeds and seedlings, and know-how tips. When my children celebrate their birthdays, the kids in the neighborhood enjoy harvesting tomatoes, string beans and leafy vegetables - a rare experience for boys and girls in the city.

What makes a garden? Frankly, I have no formula for it. I first learned farming from my father who was a gentleman farmer before I became an agriculturist. But you do not have to go for formal training to be able to farm well. All that one needs is sixth sense or down-to-earth sense, the main ingredient of a green thumb. Here are valuable tips.

1. Get the most sunlight

A maximum of five hours of sunlight should be available - geographically speaking that is. Morning and direct sunlight is ideal for photosynthesis. But you need longer exposure for fruit vegetables, corn and viny plants like, ampalaya. So with crucifers like mustard and pechay because these are long-day plants.

Well, to get more sunlight, I prune the surrounding talisay or umbrella trees at least once a year. I use the branches for trellis and poles. Then, I paint the surrounding walls with white to enhance reflected and diffused light to increase photosynthesis.

Plot the sun’s course and align the rows on an East-West direction. Plants do not directly over-shadow each other this way. This is very important during wet season when days are cloudy and plants grow luxuriantly. Other than maximizing solar radiation you also get rid of soil borne plant diseases. Sunlight that gets in between the plants helps liminate pest and pathogens. And in summer, you can increase your seeding rate, and therefore potential yield. Try planting in triangular formation or quincunx. Outline that part of the garden that receives the longest sunlight exposure. Plant this area with sun-loving plants like okra and ampalaya.

Lastly, remember that plants which grow on trellises and poles “reach out for the sun,” thus require less ground space. Put up trellises at blind corners and train viny plants to climb early and form a canopy. For string beans, use poles on which they climb. You wouldn’t believe it but as long as your rows are aligned with the sun’s movement, and that trellises and poles are used, you can plant more hills in a given area, and you can have dwarf and tall plants growing side by side. Try alternate rows of sitao, tomato and cabbage.2. Try Mixed Garden or Storey Cropping

What is the composition of an ideal garden? Again, there’s no standard design for it. The most practical type is a mixed garden. A mixed garden is like a multi-storey building. Plants are grouped according to height. That is why you have to analyze their growing habits.

Are they tall or dwarf? Are they seasonal, biennial or permanent? What part of the year do they thrive best? Refer to the planting calendar or consult your nearest agriculturist.

Look for proper cropping combinations through intercropping or crop rotation. Malunggay, papaya, kamias, banana and the like, make good border plants. Just be sure they do not shade smaller plants. Cassava and viny plants trained on trellis are next in height.

Community gardening, QC
The group of pepper, tomato and eggplant follows, while the shortest in height hierarchy are sweet potato, ginger and other root crops. Imagine how these crops are grouped and built like a tall building. We call this storey cropping.

A friend commented, “Why streamline your garden the American way?” I agree with him. Plant the Filipino way.

At any rate there are crops “we plant and forget.” Before the pot starts to shimmer, you realize you need some malunggay leaves, a dozen tops of kamote, a handful of fresh onion leaves, etc. All you need is to dash to the backyard and pick these green ingredients.

3. Practice Organic Farming

Traditional farming is back with modern relevance. Organic farming is waste recycling - not by getting rid of the waste itself but by utilizing it as production input. “This system is an alternative to conventional chemical farming”, says Domingo C. Abadilla in his book, Organic Farming.
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Practice organic farming for two reasons. Crops grown without chemical fertilizers and pesticides are safer and more nutritious.
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What would you do with poultry droppings and Azolla from the fishpond? Kitchen refuse and weeds? Make valuable compost out of them. For potash, sieve ash from a garbage-dumping site. Just be sure it is not used for industrial waste. Can we grow crops without insecticides? Generally, no. But there are ways to protect plants in a safe way, such as the following:

Alugbati, tops gathered for diningding and salad

• Use mild detergent, preferably coconut-based soap, to control aphids and other plant lice.

• Plant tomatoes around pest prone plants. They exude repellant odor on a wide variety of pests.

• Keep a vigil light above the garden pond to attract nocturnal insects that may lay eggs on your plants at daytime. Tilapia and hito relish on insects.

• A makeshift greenhouse made of plastic and mosquito net will eliminate most insects.

If you find stubborn insect pest like caterpillars and crickets, make a nicotine solution and spray. Crush one or two sticks of cigarette, irrespective of its brand, dissolve it in a bucket of water. The solution is ready for application with sprinkler or sprayer. But be sure not to use the solution on tomato, pepper and eggplant. It is possible that tobacco mosaic virus can be transmitted to these crops.

A friend who is a heavy smoker, came to visit our garden. When he touched the tomato plants, he was unknowingly inoculating mosaic virus. Tobacco virus can remain dormant in cigars and cigarette for as long as twenty years. Then it springs to life in the living system of the host plant that belongs to Solanaceae or tobacco family.

4. Raise Fish in the Garden Pond

Catfish (hito) fattened in our garden pond have become pets; the biggest measures 2 ft long. 

Water from the pond is rich with algae, plant nutrients and detritus. While you water your plants, you are also fertilizing them. The pond should be designed for growing tilapia, hito or dalag, or a combination of these. For tilapia, keep its population low to avoid overcrowding and competition. Stock fingerlings of the same size and age.

Try growing hito, native or African. When you buy live hito from the market, separate the small ones (juveniles), which will serve as your growers. They are ready to harvest in 3 to 6 months with 3 pieces making a kilo. Hito is easier to raise than any other freshwater fish. One thing is that you do not change water often because the fish prefers to have a muddy bottom to stay.

Feed the fish with chicken and fish entrails, vegetable trimmings, dog food, etc. Just avoid accumulation of feed that may decompose and cause foul odor, an indication that Oxygen is being replaced with Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen Sulfide.

Azolla, a floating fern, is good fish and animal feeds because it contains 20 to 25 percent protein,. It is also an excellent organic fertilizer because it is rich in nitrate, a product of nitrogen fixation by Anabaena, a microscopic blue-green algae living in the fronds of Azolla. Nitrate is important for plant growth. Grow Azolla in a separate pond, or in floating cage, so as to maintain a regular biomass supply.

5. Integrate Backyard Poultry
Raise some broilers and layers in separate cages. Have other cages to rear chicks and growers to replenish your stock. Formulate your feed. If not, mix commercial broiler feed and yellow corn in equal proportion. This is more economical and you may get better results than by using commercial broiler feeds alone.

Construct a fence around the cages and have some turkey on the loose. Similarly you may rear a few native chickens to get rid of feed waste. Clip their wings regularly to prevent them from escaping and destroying your garden. I don’t recommend piggery unless the neighborhood does not object to it.

6. Plant Fruit Trees

Do not forget to have some native fruit bearing trees such as guava, atis, guyabano, kamias, kalamansi and other citrus species. If your area is big you can include coconut, mango, kaimito, bananas. Rambutan? Why not? There are fruit bearing rambutan trees in some residences in Quezon City.

Atis, ripe in the tree

Just like annual plants, adopt the East-West planting method for trees so that you can have seasonal crops in between their rows. Use compost for the fruit trees, just like in vegetables. You can plant orchard trees like mango, guyabano, coconut and cashew along the sidewalk fronting your residence.

7. Make Your Own Compost, and Grow Mushrooms, Too

In one corner, build a compost pile with poles and mesh wire, 1m x 2m, and 2m in height. Dump leaves, kitchen refuse, chicken droppings and allow them to decompose to become valuable organic fertilizer. Turn the pile once a month until it is ready for use.

In another place you can have a mushroom pile made of rice straw, or water hyacinth. After harvesting the mushrooms, the spent material is a good compost material and composting will take a shorter time. To learn more about mushroom growing and composting, refer to the technology tips of DOST-PCARRD, or see your agriculturist in your area.

8. Plant Herbals - Nature’s First Aid

It is good to have the following plants as alternative medicine. Lagundi for flu and fever, guava for skin diseases and body odor, romatic pandan and tanglad for deodorant and air freshener, oregano for cough and sore throat, mayana for boils and mumps, ikmo for toothache, pandakaki for cuts. There are other medicinal plants you can grow in your backyard. Remember, herbals are nature’s first-aid.

 Pansit-pansitan (Piperomia felucida) for arthritis; Oregano for colds and sore throat, also for food flavoring (dinuguan, pizza)

 Pandan mabango for rice flavoring; soro soro for lechon

Coconut provides  the family young (buko) and mature nuts every two months. 

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 Tanglad for food flavoring, also as deodorant  

 

 Saluyot and squash flowers grow with very little attention. 

 Malunggay is a must in every backyard. It grows along fences and in dead corners into a moderate size tree that remains productive up to 20 years or even more. Our malunggay tree at home is around 35 years now. Both leaves and young pods are rich in vitamins and minerals.  

These things and many others are the reasons you should have a home garden. One thing is sure in the offing: it is a source of safe and fresh vegetables and fruits, fish and meat, and natural medicine. Most important of all, the garden is a re-creation of nature itself, a patch of the lost Eden. •

It's Harvest Time!

It's Harvest Time!

Dr Abe V Rotor

Painting and Verse by Abe V Rotor

Midas touches all – from the grains to the sun sinking,

And the grains become beads of jewels, heavy, gleaming,

In October amihan where children with kites meet,

Bringing all life forms together in retreat.

Music - the rustling of the grains and the singing

Of the harvesters and flocks of maya birds flying,

While haystacks, like giant mushrooms, grow big and tall,

Living symbols of the Good Life for all.

Of all the seasons, Amihan creates the greatest view,

When the colors of the rainbow come sweetly low.

Vivaldi, Rembrandt and Amorsolo – they were touched-

In their hearts, their lives, and their art. ~

Revolutionizing the Burger

Revolutionizing the Burger

Dr Abe V Rotor

Rice burger with patty filler and a peel of lettuce  

Lavish triple serving of different makes and side dishes 

                         

Traditional burgers from single- to triple-decker, extravagantly stuffed 

Big bite - but how? Obese-setting serving, likewise an oversize mug. 

Hybrid breakfast or big snack. Perhaps brunch (breakfast-lunch)

NOTE: Today, burger meat can be grown in the laboratory from stem cells, on the principle of cell differentiation and growth. Stem cells are produced by living things.  They come from various sources in the body such as embryonic cells (fertilized egg), stem cells from bone marrow and adipose tissues. In plants, meristems (apical, lateral and intercallary) are the equivalence of stem cells in humans and animals. 

The author believes that Stem Cell Farming (SCF) will be the next Agricultural Revolution, anent Genetic Engineering that produced GMOs (genetically modified organisms such as Bt Corn, Golden Rice, and other transgenic organisms)  Bt is the initial of Bacillus thuringensis, a soil bacterium, whose gene for caterpillar-resistance has been spliced into the genes of the corn. 

The author also believes that Stem Cell Farming will set a new frontier of production from land-based agriculture, and aquaculture, which have already reached their limits. Single-Cell Protein (SCP) Farming, such as Spirulina and Chlorella culture, will continue independently but will form a triumvirate with GMO Farming, and Stem Cell Farming, in Postmodern Green Revolution. This consortium deviates from conventional farming which, in the last three decades, evolved into Modern Agriculture, the Green Revolution of the industrial age. Because of its heavy dependence on chemical pesticides and fertilizers, hybrids, mechanization, intensive and diversified systems, people realized the harmful effects to health and environmental.  This is the main reason people are attracted to Natural Farming, that is, the production of food virtually the return to traditional farming, the age-old farming system prior to the modern era.  

Scenarios on Current Trends in Agriculture: 

1. Stem cell farming will ignite rage and ethico-moral controversy. What with the wild thought of human stem cell hamburger! 

2. GMO farming has stirred worldwide controversy since its early stage. Worldwide, countries and organizations are calling for its restriction, if not total ban. 

3. Genetic engineering has given rise to a new and most destructive form of pollution to the living world - Genetic Pollution, which is destroying the integrity of natural gene pools of plants, animals, and microorganisms. 

4. Genetic pollution spreads through pollination in plants and mating in animals, albeit induced mutation. GM plants can pollute whole fields. The mechanism is true to animals, consequently populations. There is no way of stop genetic pollution once it has set in, unlike conventional pollution. 

5. Farming the sea will continue with harmful ecological consequences. Like deforestation on land, marine vegetation, from mangrove to seaweeds and sea grasses will greatly suffer, even as the cultivation of seaweeds like Eucheuma and Calerpa, is now a lucrative industry. 

6. Fish farming of marine and freshwater species has expanded into off shore floating cages and plantation-size fish pens. Wild species in captivity proved to be successful in groupers, mullets, and lately, the salmon which has virtually lost its homing instinct through genetic manipulation.  

7. Hydroponics (soiless farming) and aeroponics (farming on multi-storey buildings) continue to "bring agriculture into the city," as more and more people move into urban centers. 

8. Home gardening and backyard orchards are back with the objectives of recycling, self-sufficiency and sanitation, not to mention aesthetic beauty. This trend goes hand in hand with the revival of traditional societies, as people are tired living in the city.   

9. People are becoming conscious of their health by avoiding chemically grown plants and animals, aware of the harmful effects of chemical residues, "Frankenfood"  (GMOs), toxic metals and antibiotic residues, among others.    

10. Wild food plants like Amaranthus, Portulaca, Corchorus and Mollogo have found their way to the dining table and market.  So with many native varieties of fruits and vegetables on one hand, and native breeds of animals and poultry, on the other. ~

Living Wheels of Plankton

Living Wheels of Plankton

Dr Abe V Rotor

 Living Wheels of Plankton, in acrylic, AVR 2014. Author's concept of association and cooperation among the sea's plankton communities cum associates that form food webs at sea and lakes.  Sub-colonies in gyrating motion allows independence as well as convergence, always in dynamic balance.  This original concept is a tool for survival, following the principle of cellular organization into tissues, into organs and ultimately, into systems. Taken collectively, plankton form ecological systems that have common as well as distinct individual characteristics.   

Plankton, the biggest and most diverse group of organisms form interacting sub-colonies of millions of members living at the lighted zone of seas and lakes some 10 to 50 meters deep; 

Plankton, they are organized into food chains, to food webs and pyramids, through which the sun's energy flows through the living system these organisms make;

Plankton, the autotrophs (photo-synthesizers) capture solar energy, the heterotrophs (consumers), feed of the former, in turn are food of other bigger organisms, including man;

Plankton, without them the seas, oceans, and lakes would be barren like desert; they form the earth's largest pasture, the number one producers of biomass and Oxygen that supply the living world;    

Plankton, they are the least understood in composition and ecology, yet they are the oldest organisms, many barely changed through evolution some one billion years ago;  

Plankton, the least subject of art and literature, imagined more as fantasy rather than science, and nil in understanding social biology that links them with the human species;   

Plankton, they must have evolved from somewhere else other the primeval earth, perhaps they rode on asteroids, rose separately, but later merged into the family tree of life. ~ 

Faces of Nature in Postmodern Art

Faces of  Nature in Postmodern Art  

Paintings by Dr Abe V Rotor

 

In this painting Romanticism is very much alive - subject, scenery, colors and the like.  It tells a story in the viewer mind, reminiscent of life experiences.  The bridge is symbolic of transition, connectedness, a rendezvous of characters, players of a drama.  Nothing seems to move - placid pond, moss-covered trees; autumn colors speak of "coming home." Postmodern art takes us some steps back to the "fine art" of art apparently lost behind new movements.    

This painting on the other hand, challenges the viewer to identify the subject in a kind of hide-and -seek game. He moves to a distance, returns - what is it really?  And he traces the intricate lines visually and with a finger over the overlapping colors, and there beneath the feathery foliage are hidden creatures.  It is abstract in the biological  world where camouflage, mimicry and other forms of deceits are means of survival and dominance. These in various sophistication are not different from man's ways to cope up with the increasing demands and complexity of a postmodern world.  

Two views, two messages, two different feelings. In our postmodern world we long for the peaceful, rustic, unspoiled landscape, a retreat, withdrawing from the fire raging from the inside and outside.  It is  a craving tolerated at the expense of change and here man becomes an orphan having lost Mother Nature. Postmodern art offers man a chance to return to sanity, a renewal in the way he lives.  This is  is the essence of a new art's movement of Neo-renaissance.       

Are these real or just animaes? The country-bred associates them with reality, even if many of their kind are already gone; the streetwise may find it difficult to analyze; and the computer-TV kid definitely sides with the cartoons. What an art; three audiences, three worlds.  If postmodern art thrives on divisiveness of the same subject, then what is the purpose of art? Postmodern art has  indeed created contradicting versions, false impressions, inadvertent innocence and ignorance. Art educates, art enlightens, art unites - its movements flow like a river, from one source to one destiny, like humanity.      

What did the world look like before man came into the picture. Science and technology has opened an art movement and gave concrete basis to its theme and  character. Postmodernism of course, was born from scientific breakthroughs.  But art is more than formulas and equations. And the more we rely on the formal, essential, empirical, primordial, striving to seek for the missing link and the prima causa, the more we move away from the very essence of art - that which is a synergy of intellect, psyche, spirit and soul, that binds the rational being and the the fabric of humanity.       

Two forces of nature: cyclic and non-cyclic. Every thing in the universe is governed by these two models. So on Planet Earth, in the living and non-living world, in our lives, the march of seasons, in the life cycle of organisms - they follow the concentric  model, characterized by repetition as if it is a plantilla. Nature is alive. She doesn't sleep. She can only rest like fallowing, aestivation, hibernation. She is as gentle as breeze and rough like a storm at sea. She is discreet like alpha radiation, silent as a dormant volcano, suddenly waking up. So with living things. They reproduce, form populations, reach a climax level and establish a niche. Populations interact, they compete. There is diversity. Balance of Nature is built this way and is always dynamic. How can postmodern art imbue these into the minds of younger generations?

 

The beginning of things is the most elusive of all adventures in any field. To what extent can postmodern art lead us to?  Will we ever succeed in understanding the beginning of life, the Black Hole, the end of space. Postmodern art has indeed removed much the barrier of thought and imagination. 

Evolution is now in the hands of man.  Fantasy has grown to reality; it is no stranger than fiction itself.  Man has changed life, playing God's role of creation. Man-made amino-acids make unbelievable combinations of proteins, the precursor of life. Genetic engineering relegates the infamous Frankenstein to the backseat. Why we can cross and combine genes irrespective of species, genera, phyla, across kingdoms of the living world!  Does postmodern art merely ride on his feat? Will it just drift with the current of "progress"? 

Respite from a long walk. Take a break.

Won't you drop by and say, Hello, to Nature? 

Dr Abe V Rotor

Wall Mural by the author at his residence Lagro, Metro Manila.

Beat summer heat on the campain trail;
take a break by a living wall:
sailboats riding on the sea breeze, 
dolphins in playful race,
the sea beneath is full of life  -
why all the haste and strife? 

 

  Make believe water flowing to wash your hands

stream running down under your feet;

soothing is the ambiance of nature on a wall . 

having walked long an a busy street

 

Yours is the world of Nature even only for a while;

it invigorates, it recharges, it elevates

the sagging spirit, tired nerves, frayed muscles; 

find rest in the realm the mind creates.

Some food and water to the needy, 

make a oasis in a desolate city;

moreso a helping hand and company

bouy the spirit above pity. 

Refresh by a cold mountain stream

running down the grass;

be a part of the scene for a while 

          and just let time pass            

    

Man with a Hammer

Dr Abe V Rotor

Man with a Hammer, life size in stone by a local artisan, 
the late Boy Peralta..San Vicente, Ilocos Sur   

Here he stands, sun and rain, season in and out, alone,

a sledge hammer hangs on his brawn, frozen in time;

so blank his stare toward his subject, lifeless as stone,

immortality defined in neglect in mournful sublime.  

And yet seeks man the mystery of power cum divine,

a god from Mount Olympus, on Apollo to the moon;  

yet Man with a Hoe, Markham's hero a lowliest  kind, 

and Rodin's thinking man turned prophet of doom. 

Mortal, shortcut to man lofty dreams, and often greed,

 a hammer falling from the sky striking the hardest;

not once, but many times 'til the die is cast to the grid,  

in Medusa's gaze, freezing man perhaps in his best. 

And bridging the gaps of thoughts and generations,

in suspended animation of true story or legend;

yet live the man with a hammer for whatever reasons,

  and souls seeking immortality at the final bend.~ 

“If” epitomizes a son becoming a man - or a daughter becoming a woman. By Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

This article is dedicated to the young people who crossed the bridge to adult life through deeds that proved themselves responsible citizens and children of God, heroes notwithstanding, during the calamities. ~

 "Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it ...   
 you'll be a Man, my Son." - Rudyard Kipling

Dr Abe V Rotor

There's one thing that summarizes the theme of Kipling's works in general. If you are a child and read Kipling, you are challenged to grow up into a responsible adult - full and ripe, responsible and true - perhaps ahead of your time and that of others. The poem, If, epitomizes a son becoming a man - or a daughter becoming a woman.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired of waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken 
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them, "Hold on!"

If can talk with crowds and keep your virtue
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, 
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you will be a man, my son!

FLASHBACK
Calamities continue to claim lives and properties, even as previous victims have not yet recovered. Typhoon Yolanda cut a swath of destruction and desolation unprecedented in Philippine history. War erupted recently on the Gaza Strip at the Israel-Palestine border.  Civil war threatens Libya and Egypt as they struggle for democracy after a long period of dictatorship. Racial and religious conflict rock Iraq and Sudan. 

Separatist movement in Ukraine aided by Russia nearly broke into a civil war. The conflict has claimed innocent civilians including the downing by missile a passing Malaysian commercial airplane that resulted in the death of 298 passengers and crew members. In just a year after another Malaysian airplane was down for unknown cause. A series of similar airline tragedies followed, suspectedly the work of terrorists. As of this writing Brussels is reeling from a devastating series of bombings killing 32 and wounding 240 people. The modus operandi of the terrorists is the same as that of the Paris bombing which cause the death of more than a hundred innocent civilians. Terrorism in on the rise worldwide, including Tunisia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and the Philippines.  The world is threatened by the breakdown of peace and order on one hand, and the decline of economy, exacerbated by man-induced disasters principally global warming and pollution.           

Hard times breed the Man of the Hour. It awakens the child to become man.

• He is the Boy on the Dike who plugged a leak in the dike with his arm in order to save Holland from the engulfing sea. 
• He is the boy who carried an apple on his head which his father, William Tell, must hit with arrow in order to gain their freedom from the dictator Gessler. 
• He is the orphan Oliver in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, who became a victim of a cruel and unjust society, but was able to rise from his woeful state. 
• He is the boy in Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island who found a treasure not only of gold and silver, but an immeasurable one - treasure of becoming into real man. 

• He is our own, an eighteen year old who saved two families before he lost his own life in Pasig during the flood. 
• They are the two teenagers led by a police officer who heroically ferried 130 victims to safety at the height of the flood in San Jacinto, Pangasinan. 
• He is the young Rizal, the young Bonifacio, Mabini, del Pilar et al destined to become heroes of their country. 

While Kipling glorified the common man - the common soldier in his works (Plain Tales from the Hills, and Soldiers Three), this Nobel Prize winner in Literature equally prodded children to become responsible, as clearly manifested in his Jungle Book, which became a children classic all over the world. His advocacy is also shown in Kim (1901), an adventure book in the Himalayas, which is perhaps his most felicitous work. Other works include The Second Jungle Book (1895), The Seven Seas (1896), and Captain Courageous (1897).

What make a child to be a man to Rudyard Kipling are basically the same to Mark Twain, which are early freedom and love of adventure, coupled with discipline and virtuous grooming under a natural setting - Kipling, being the immanent- moralist; and Twain, the liberal sociologist. Twain's characters - Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and Mowgli in Kipling's The Jungle Book turned adventurism into heroism in their own right.

There are models of girls-turned-women ahead of their time.  

• Take the case of Joan of Arc who was then only 16 when she led the French army against the English invaders,
• the blind and deaf child who was able to overcome the world of darkness and silence and became one of the most famous women in the world - Helen Keller. 
• the orphan girl in The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett who rebuilt a forgotten garden into a "piece of Paradise," 
• the Railway Children by Edith Nesbit who carried on a responsible life while their father was imprisoned for a crime he did not commit.
• Anne Frank. a girl survivor in Nazi Germany during World War II whose dairy became a conscience of free and peace loving people throughout the world
• Heidi by Johanna Spyri, an all time favorite story for girls. Heidi rose from the circumstance of being unwanted to become the light and inspiration to many.
• Malala Yousafzai (photo) a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate (2014). She is known mainly for human rights advocacy .
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• Millions of boys and girls all over the world, if given the same chance and test, are the characters to whom the poem, If of Kipling is addressed to - be it in times of extreme difficulties or peace.