Following Humans

One tool for plant survival is being tasty and/or useful to humans. We might (in this day and economic age) assume this means they make themselves yummy and therefore people can consciously propagate them. But your compost bin can give you surprising babies while you do nothing.



From peels of gabi (taro) and potatoes (above), babies came sprouting. From thin peels! Absurd. This means that though humans gut the root crops and stuff most parts of those into their bellies, they still propagate from our kitchen scraps, and therefore "follow" us around. Here I was planting chunks of potato "eyes" in the States, when I could get by with not more than a tiny bit. I'm kind of freaked out that the potato will rot because it's much wetter here, but I've got it in a dry spot and away from much sun. Haven't looked into growing them here much yet, and I have a feeling I can't just let it grow wantonly like I did in the US.



The gabi (above) is a different variety from the two that I've got growing.

Tagaytay

Impatiens.

The foggy slopes of Tagaytay are friendly to flowers.


Bromeliad flowers.


Bromeliad flowers too.


Some hairy ginger flower-like thing that grows super large on the slopes but super small in our garden.

Informal Settlers

I apologize again for the long absence. In addition to being in and out of town, I've also been experiencing problems with laptop battery retardation. I'm operating a laptop now without a battery, so I always need power to blog-- I can't blog in transit. That's making me a bit remiss in recording my thoughts.

But anyway, someone has taken residency near our workshop/garage. It's a little white puppy with short legs, the child of the white dog who makes frequent appearances in our garden. Here it is, resting in a relatively hidden spot before sprinting across the grass into its home.



It's a really cute thing and scared of people. I'm a bit fascinated as to how the mother-child tandem are able to work out an arrangement of living close to each other (the ma lives somewhere in our garden, I suspect), but separate, for the sake of safety. The puppy climbs into the tangle of vines and baskets, and surfaces to be with his/her mother or to eat.

One time, because of my brutish nature, I waited by its home and tried to grab the puppy to inspect it more closely. Unfortunately, it was really frightened, and half its body was inside the basket-jungle, so I would have had to tear it in half to extract it. It started crying with a voice that much exceeded its size, and the mom arrived on the scene soon after. Honestly, I felt really bad about stressing it out, but I was just overcome with curiosity. The mom was kind enough to just stand beside us and make sure I didn't harm the pup.

Often they go out together, presumably on learning lessons about hunting or foraging for food, or maybe plain togetherness. Here is a photo of the pup crossing the dangerous grass area where it is likely to be grabbed by curious residents of our home:



And here is the mom following it across: