Goodbye Golden Shower, 'tis the end of summer

Invitation to songwriters
to compose a song with this lyrics. 
Dr Abe V Rotor

 Golden Shower (Cassia fistula)

The Siberian High lulls you to sleep,
While summer heralds your birth
Into a kingdom regal yet brief
That reigns over a parched earth.

You greet the sun with garlands of gold,
Dancing the whole day through;
And soon explode into a thousand fold,
Only to fall and cease to grow.

Sybil’s ghost hangs, flowerless you stand,
Save pods dangling in dull chime
In the wind - then fall to the ground.
‘Tis the end of summer time.



Acknowledgement: Internet Hawaii flowers 

Plants every home garden must have

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature School on Blog

Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio

738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday
Saba banana (Musa sapientum): multipurpose - leaves for food wrapper (suman, tupig, bibingka, kanin), packaging material (baon, live or fresh fish and aquatic products), leaves as floorwax. Fruit, ripe or green, excellent source of energy and nutrients, so with the flowers (puso ng saging). Trunk as source of fiber and packing materials. Mushroom spawn under banana plants.

Lesson - Rainy season will peak in July and August. Take advantage of the season. There's natural fertilizer in the soil. Alternate sunshine and rainfall favors plants to grow and develop fast. Have these plants listed in your backyard, idle lots sidewalk, park, also pots, cans and plastic containers. (See Home Garden Models)

Don't replace any plant that is useful or have potential value. Allow those that spontaneously grow like saluyot, spinach, alugbati talinum, gulasiman. They are wild and seasonal. Help them grow for your vegetable supply, herbal medicine, and animal feeds.

It's gardening time! And gardening is beneficial for your kitchen, home beautification and sanitation, and most important of all, your health. And, why not initiate gardening in your school and community?

Coconut (Cocos nucifera): It's the most important plant in the world when it comes to productivity and variety of products. The nut is a complete food - young or mature. There is no part of the plant that has no value. Walis tingting, leaves for mat, wall, and sinambong basket. Trunk lumber outlasts most wood. Fiber from husk for cordage and net, coir dust for soil conditioner. Flower spadix for ties and rope. Nectar for beverage and lambanog. All you need is two to three trees at some years age interval. A coconut tree can live productively up to fifty years giving you at least a dozen nuts every month.

Malunggay, the miracle vegetable. In the province no home is without this small tree at the backyard or on a vacant lot. The leaves, flowers, juvenile pods and young fruits of Moringa oleifera (Family Moringaceae) go well with fish, meat, shrimp, mushroom, and the like. It is one plant that does not need agronomic attention, not even weeding and fertilization, much less chemical spraying. You simply plant an arms length cutting or two, in some corner or along the fence and there it grows into a tree that can give you a ready supply of vegetables yearound. What nutrients do we get from malunggay?

Here is a comparison of the food value of the fresh leaves and young fruits, respectively, in percent. (Marañon and Hermano, Useful Plants of the Philippines)

• Proteins 7.30 7.29

• Carbohydrates 11.04 2.61

• Fats 1.10 0.16

• Crude Fiber 1.75 0.76

• Phosphorus (P2 O 5) 0.24 0.19

• Calcium (CaO) 0.72 0.01

• Iron (Fe2O3) 0.108 0.0005

Atsuete or anatto (Bixa orellana) is the best natural food color and adjunct, in cooking paella, upo, noodles, frog, etc. It is used extensively in imparting color of cheese and butter, also yogurt. Natural cosmetics are made from atsuete. Flowers are colorful in the garden. Its a small tree, provides good shade and does not attract insects.

Kamias: Once in a while try sinigang with kamias, specially fish. It takes out the fish smell. ITs dourness is distinct from vinegar, tamarind, and kalamansi. Just don't indulge too much because the sour taste is oxalic acid which is deficient in calcium. But oxalic acid is best for cleaning tiles and utensils. Its effective in cleaning the drain. Bees often visit its flowers.

Tanglad or lemon grass as food condiment for kuhol and lechon. As deodorizer, it imparts pleasant smell, absorbs or masks unplesant odor in bathroom and kitchen.

Aloe vera is a used mainly as hair conditioner, stimulating hair growth, and giving shine and smoothness on dull and rough hair. It is mixed with fruit juice. Commercial fruit juice products use aloevera as solids or pulps. As home remedy, it is used to treat minor burns.Gumamela: It comes in more than a dozen varieties. Other than its all year round flowers that make a garden attractive and home of butterflies, the gumamela serves as home remedy for boil and mumps. Young petals are also cooked as vegetable

Alugbati is a climber, and lives for some years providing a continuous supply of shoots or tops cooked as vegetable, best with mungo. It is the cheapest and readily available source of iron for the family.

Pandan mabango: Aromatic, its leaves improve the taste of food. Put a leaf in a pot of old rice (laon) before cooking to take out the moldy taste and smell. Pandan leaves make a refreshing drink with any fruit juice. Try sago, gulaman and pandan. Pandan cake? It breaks the monotony in bread products. First prepare a layer of pandan leaves like mat before cooking fish paksiw will taste. Clean kitchen utensils and tiles with crushed leaves. A unique volatile oil present only in pandan mabango make this plant a favorite of housewives .

These are also a must to have in the garden: 

1. Onion (shallot or bulb)
2. Papaya
3. Guava
4. Sorosoro (karimbuaya Ilk)
5. Oregano
6. Lagundi
7. Sambong
8. Lemon or kalamansi
9. Luya (ginger)
10. Sampaguita
    

Don't forget to build a garden pond and plant around it water-loving plants. Pond water becomes green with algae. It is the best natural fertilizer, specially if you are raising tilapia or hito or Pangasius catfish.

1. Kangkong
2. Gabi
3. Sugarcane for chewing

Here are some suggested plants to include.

1. Kutchai
2. Siling labuyo
3. Kamote
4. Yerba buena (mint)
5. Ampalaya

Depending on the type of soil and climate of your place, you can add on to this list, substitute those that don't fit. Arrange plants into a multistory structure for in increase density and diversity. Arrange them according to a homestead pattern for functional and aesthetic reasons. Aim for functionality and practicality.

Just don't overload your garden. Give yourself a break. Don't be a slave to your garden, so to speak. By the way even without our knowing it, annual plants simply sprout in the garden. Many of these are seasonal. While most are so-called weeds, there are food plants that grow spontaneously like saluyot, amaranth of kolitis, wild yam, wild ampalaya, talinum, and at least a dozen more if you are living in a fertile and well drained area.

A home garden actually is a miniature representation of a large farm. It is typical in size for a family, as small as 10 square meters to one hectare. The garden is an integral part of the home. It aims at self-sufficiency, environmental friendliness, and health-promoting, and ultimately, at living in a Home, Sweet Home with Nature.~

Amsterdam, bike-friendliest city

Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature School on Blog

Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio

738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday

There are 880,000 bicycles - more than the city's population of 800,000, that some streets have so many cyclists on them there are bike traffic jams.

The 20 Most Bike-Friendly Cities In The World.   

The newly released Copenhagenize Index 2013, produced by the Copenhagenize Design Co., ranked 150 cities around the world on 13 parameters, including cycling facilities, culture, sharing program, gender split, politics, and traffic calming. It also gave bonus points for categories like political leadership.Here are the top 20 cities, each with a score out of 100 points.

Bikers in downtown Amsterdam 

1. Amsterdam, Netherlands

2. Copenhagen, Denmark

3. Utrecht, Netherlands

4. Seville, Spain, Bordeaux, France (tie)

5. Nantes, France, Antwerp, Belgium (tie)

6. Eindhoven, Netherlands

7. Malmö, Sweden

8. Berlin, Germany

9. Dublin, Ireland

10. Tokyo, Japan

11. Munich, Germany, Montreal, Canada, Nagoya, Japan (tie)

12. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

13. Barcelona, Spain, Budapest, Hungary (tie), Paris, France (tie)

14. Hamburg, Germany

  Acknowledgement: Wikipedia, Time 

Ephemeris

Dr Abe V Rotor

Fire tree (Delonix regia) in bloom doused by the first rain in May, AVR 1988

True beauty’s so brief and shy,

And elusive to behold,

Gaining all the eyes of the world,

Yet alone to be awed.

Beautiful. Yes you are!

Clothed with the colors of the sun;

For now you’re a flower shining,

Shining, dying.

Sparkling dewdrops cling and rise

To bring down a passing cloud;

Beauty can’t wait, like the seed.

Waking to nature’s bid.

Friendship earned but in a glance,

Like butterflies on a tree;

Resting on a long journey,

To where they are free. ~

Bouquet

Dr Abe V Rotor

Painting in acrylic, AVR 2011

Bouquet - how extreme:

how happy, how sad,

how deceitful, how holy,

how tame, how mad!

Bouquet - how fresh,

picked for vase or lei;

how withered when gone

across the bay.

Bouquet - how fragrant

across the hall;

how lavish in summer,

how dearth in fall.

Bouquet - how missed

the bee, the butterfly

in the garden, the rainbow

an arch of sigh.~

Enigmatic Aphid - Master of Survival

Dr Abe V Rotor

A colony of aphids (Aphis gossypii) on cabbage

By sheer number, you are statistically stable,

by the rule of the multiplication table.

Ensconced in your host's leaves and flower,

you're safe from enemies and the sprayer.

Generations, one after another, under a roof,

offspring in various stages is the proof.

Winged, the males visit other colonies

to share and bring in new genes.

Parasitic by habit, yet you spare your host

from untimely demise at all cost.

But when food supply threatens your colony,

your young is forced to mature early

By the mysterious process of paedogenesis;

and sexless parthenogenesis.

And by symbiosis with the fierce red ant,

food you give, protection its grant.

No other creature I know can you be compared,

your kind I think, will be spared

The morning after, from the Armageddon,

when the earth is barren and alone.

And life after people, you are likely a survivor,

all because Nature is in your favor . ~

Life and the Traffic Light

Dr Abe V Rotor

Time is likened to the traffic light;
It signals you to go or to stop;
It comes in cycles like in a flight;
Not a wink, and rest is but a gap -
Warning nil when your time is up. ~