Quarantino and my other plants

Agbiagkayo, wen? Dummakelkayo, agsabongkayo,” I heard my sister whisper as she transplanted her newly-bought mini cacti into old mugs she randomly scoured from our kitchen.

She meant “You thrive, alright? You grow, and you bloom.”

Folk tales have it that communicating with plants encourages their growth and blooming. It’s a belief that has been passed on from generation to generation, or at least among plant enthusiasts. A quick Google search even confirms that this belief is not exclusive to the Philippines.

Over the course of the quarantine period, my sister and I got our hands into gardening. It was a childhood hobby, and I fondly remember myself as a gradeschooler keenly tending to my bougainvillea cuttings before they were ready for submission to school. Yes, back then, live plants were our teachers’ favorite class requirement.

Adulting came, and my love for plants took the backseat. I tried to revive this interest by placing some small succulents on my office desk, only for them to die a few weeks later.

If there’s any consolation about the pandemic, it’s that it has suddenly given me all the time off I only daydreamed about on days I would stare blankly at my office computer.

Now, more than three months into the “stay at home” mantra, I find myself rekindling my strained relationship with my leafy pals, living the provincial life here in my hometown in La Union.

I still work from home, but at least I can now enjoy my coffee and greet the sansevierias “good morning” before checking in to my online work wearing only my boxers.

A few days before the lockdown, I received a bonsai as a gift from my boss. I named it “Quarantino” because I thought it was cute to give a plant a name.

In between breaks from my online work, I would go to Quarantino and water her (yes, she’s a girl). I do not have to worry about overwatering Quarantino because bonsais are trees, after all.

And when my online shift is over, I ditch my mouse for a trowel and Wi-Fi for garden soil. I then plant everything I see in sight—a kalachuchi, some ferns, an aged buenavista. One day, I ran out of things to plant so I repotted a barsanga (a local type of invasive garden weed).

Repotting has become a habit. I repotted an aglaonema with yellowing tips because maybe it just needed a new home; a palmera from a wornout kaserola to a clay pot; and a perfectly fine oxalis with its glorious violet beauty to the pot vacated by the aglaonema. I stopped only when I realized my plants seemed like they were playing Trip to Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, my sister has been tending to, aside from her prickly pets in a cup, sprouts of vegetable seeds she sowed early April. Weeks into the lockdown, the provincial agriculture office began distributing vegetable seeds to constituents to encourage them to produce food from their backyard, much to my alarm. Did that mean the quarantine would drag on? Was the government running out of “ayuda”? Why were we being made to produce our own food? Before I got the answers, our neighbors began harvesting their sitaw and turned them into hearty dinengdeng.

Truly, gardening could be a way to introduce food production and sustainability in every household. As for me, I do gardening to de-stress. The joy of putting my hands in the dirt, the warm energy I feel emanating from the earth, and the vitality that each new leaf brings every waking day—it’s just magical, euphoric.

Yes, I cannot eat my ZZ plant for a salad, or cook my Chinese evergreens into sinigang. But at least having them around brings me inner peace.

And so while I wait for mass testing to happen, or lament the apparent misplaced priorities of the national government, I might as well talk to my plants in the meantime. Science has not yet conclusively proven that plants have the ability to speak to humans. Sure, they talk to each other, like how the trees correspond through root networks underground. But do plants hear us? Do they listen to us?

Why is my sister whispering to her cacti? Why do I greet my snake plants good morning?

Could it be that when we whisper to our plants, we are actually speaking to ourselves? We remind our inner beings that despite adversity and uncertainty, we thrive, we grow, we bloom?

Justin Paul D. Marbella, 27, writes about plants and planting, life and living in his personal blog.