‘Halaman Woman’

I was in Tagaytay with friends, brainstorming for a new business venture, when one of them asked, “Why do you like gardening?”

I have given myself the nickname “Halaman Woman” since I fell into gardening two years ago. I have officialized this claim by making an Instagram account where I chronicle my gardening, both indoor and outdoor, in photographs.

I am not particularly gifted in gardening, nor do I believe that a “green thumb” exists. I believe in learning curves and tenacity — that if one kills enough plants, one is also bound to keep some of them alive. I also believe in the internet and the gardening knowledge that it doles out for free.

I started with three plants that I kept alive for two months, and then bought 10 at a time until my house was overtaken by them—the living room first, and then my bedroom. At one point, in my (futile) attempt to keep my newly purchased plants alive, I removed my bedroom curtains. Never mind being awakened by the bright sun every single day. My plants needed light.

Shortly after this, I was too overwhelmed by my mother’s death that I stopped watering my plants. One by one, they died of neglect. I also stopped sleeping and writing my master’s thesis.

I grew up witnessing the wonderful things my mother could do to a small patch of land. Our house in Cavite, the one I grew up in and the one that I never returned to after I left for college at 16, had a yard. The yard was divided into two by a cement path leading to our tiny house. On the left were my mother’s orchids, and on the right were my parents’ fruits and vegetables.

I have no idea where my mother learned her gardening techniques. Her ways were odd yet effective. She would talk to her orchids and touch their leaves. Sweetly and politely, she would ask the waling-waling and the vanda to yield big and fragrant flowers. She would also sing to them made-up melodies without words. Some days, she would blast the Carpenters in full volume and let Karen serenade them for a change. In exchange, her

orchids did her bidding.

Although she loved her garden, I always knew that she loved me more because, every March, she would pick flowers from the orchids that she so painstakingly grew and make a corsage for recognition day. As other children donned ordinary sampaguita garlands that their mothers bought outside the school gates, I wore a single, yellow cattleya bloom in a corsage, handmade by my mother.

The fruits and vegetables were another matter. They were not as meticulously cared for as the orchids, but my parents spent many weekends working back to back to make sure that our land was productive. In that 30-square-meter patch of soil, my parents grew tomatoes, calamansi, ginger, kamote, round eggplants, peppers and tsaang gubat. We also had a couple of fruit trees: avocado, balimbing, papaya and guava. I have many memories of my parents squatting side by side, preparing the soil or weeding, a picture of a happy marriage.

So much of our family life changed when my mother got sick. One of the first things she did when she learned of her diagnosis was to give her orchids away to friends who were deemed worthy of their care. We also gave away our dogs, but somehow, the loss of the orchids, the ones that my mother talked and sang to, felt greater. Weeds overcame my parents’ vegetable garden, since nobody had the time or the energy to maintain them as we assumed our new role as caregivers.

I can recite my mother’s medical history in my sleep. It all started when her right cheek went numb. We went to a hospital in Pasay, and the doctor said it might be Bell’s palsy. It wasn’t Bell’s palsy. It was a brain tumor, meningioma to be exact. In the next 11 years, my mother would undergo three brain surgeries, the first one being the most successful as it lent her four years of recovery and normalcy, until the tumor grew back aggressively. It rendered her unable to speak, to eat (she used a feeding tube), and to walk in the last five years of her life.

In a 7 a.m. phone call, my sister Sydne told me that our mother had died. As she was telling me the news, I made some snap decisions in my head: We will cremate immediately; we will hold the services at home, not in a chapel; and we will buy flowers in Dangwa. Others may find it strange that I would make decisions about flower arrangements immediately after hearing the news of my mother’s passing, but I knew that she loved flowers and that they should be chosen with care.

So, beside her urn were two large vases, filled to the brim with dancing ladies and dendrobiums. We chose yellow and white chrysanthemums to complement the orchids, and hoped that those who would offer their condolences would not bring us any more flowers. After 11 years of illness, death felt less like a loss of life and more like a homecoming, a shedding of a body that failed my mother for so long.

In his book, “Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education,” Michael Pollan wrote, “Most of gardening is a return, an effort of recovering remembered landscapes.”

When I returned to gardening four months ago, I started slow. Miraculously, my golden pothos that I surrendered to the elements, to the rain and the sun, evaded death. I had one plant. And then my favorite barista from a local café gave me cuttings of a philodendron. I planted onions and bought succulents that I placed on my windowsill. And then I brought home a satin pothos, a monstera and a couple of euphorbias.

According to my mental inventory, I have more or less 40 plants today. I start my day by sticking my index finger into soil to check for moisture. I learned to water my plants according to their needs, not according to a schedule. Unlike my mother, my gardening techniques are not very odd. I mist my plants and use pebble trays for humidity. I read growing instructions and compare notes with virtual and real-life gardening friends.

But just like her, I talk to my plants. I ask them how they are.

I tell them to thrive and to grow, and when the mood strikes, I sing to them, sometimes with a ukulele, made-up songs about staying alive.

Gardening is a point of convergence of my mother’s personal history and mine. She did not witness a lot of my adulthood, so I sometimes speculate about what our relationship would be like if we had met as strangers in our 20s. I wonder if she and I would be friends. I wonder if she would like me.

For my sake, I keep a list of things that she might like but she would never experience. At the top of my list is unlimited Korean barbecue. I can no longer ask her about the feeling gardening gives her. I cannot ask her to describe how flowering vandas make her feel, but at least through gardening, I could approximate her joy, my mother’s joy, the original Halaman Woman.

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Faith Buenacosa, 28, teaches communication at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. She documents her plant

adventures at @halamanwoman on Instagram.