And so my chestnuts continue to burst through their hairy coverings to expose those frilled-up first leaves. They are growing out in a quite exclamatory manner, all three of them. In a decade or so, I will probably have enough nuts to feed a single miserable person hiding in a dark closet on Christmas Eve. I took the seeds from the side of the road at SEARSOLIN in Cagayan de Oro.
I also have quite an abundance of Manga Chupadera seedlings. Yes, those small sweet ones that are also called
supsupins, of which you can stuff three or four of into your mouth. They grew out of my compost pile, which had considerably overflowed during mango season. They are funny seedlings, with three or four stems growing out of a single seed.
The durian seeds are also looking pretty good! The babies look strange. They look like little monsters.
But really, what everyone has been talking about back here, are the itchy caterpillars or
higads. They go through this horrible hairy phase before becoming moths. My eggplant-plant, once full of promise and all that, now looks like a cheap umbrella would after running into a hurricane and a teething pup. It has also eaten a lot of the vines I was supposed to use as green manure. If it's any consolation, they leave a lot of frass (caterpillar poo) behind, which is supposed to be quite nutritious. Ah, the give-and-take of nature.
