Harvesting Vegetables for Lunch at Our and Our Neighbor's Gardens <3

My parents and I were hanging around under the mango tree beside our house earlier today. Our internet connection has been acting up for a while now, so I'm not able to work. While we were there, our neighbor, Manang Lourdes, came over, and we had some fun conversations. She's our elderly neighbor who's very good at gardening. She's so enthusiastic and knowledgeable about it, and we always learn a lot from her.

After a while, my mom asked the very common question most moms usually ask. What should we have for lunch?

Manang Lourdes answered, " Eat vegetables because it's healthy!" So my mom asked her if we could buy some of her produce since she usually sells it. However, she said... "No, you guys don't need to buy. Let's harvest some together... just give me some of the vegetable soup you're cooking."

She actually likes my mother's cooking, so we followed her into her garden to harvest some of her vegetables.

First, we harvested some string beans. She gave us some seeds to plant last time, but we haven't planted them yet because we're still trying to make some changes in our garden. The soil there isn't very good, so we need to gather healthier soil, cow manure, and other stuff to make it better for our future plants.

Then, we gathered some sponge gourd. She said she originally just planted 5 sponge gourds and let them crawl around the place. She added some ropes or wires around her house, so now it has reached outside her fence, and she extended her garden in that area. This vegetable is so soft that it mostly just melts when added to the soup, and it smells good.

Lastly, we harvested some eggplants. My mom planted some eggplant seeds in a small container in our garden, but only two of the seeds sprouted. Manang Lourdes said that when she's able to grow more eggplants in her garden, she's going to give us seedlings instead. The soil in her garden is really nice, whereas the soil in our garden is a little sandy and isn't really that suitable for planting, so we had to create little planter boxes and add better soil.

Above is all the stuff we gathered from Manang Lourdes' garden. And of course, vegetable soup wouldn't be vegetable soup without the greens! So, my mom and I went to our garden to harvest some.

We love having a lot of green leafy vegetables in our vegetable soup, so let's check them out.

First, we harvested some malabar spinach. :)

Next, we also got some sweet potato leaves and some water spinach.

This one is called "sangig". It's one of the newest additions to our garden. We got it from our landlord, and I looked it up. It's called lemon basil in English. It smells really good!!!

I like soup with a little bit of heat, so we also included some chili. We plan to plant more chilis because my father and I love spicy food, so Mom is planning to make chili oil for us. <3

And then, we got some moringa leaves. We have an abundance of moringa leaves here, so my friend and other neighbors usually come over to ask for some.

That's the garden haul!!! Both from our and Manang Lourdes' gardens... Ohh, we also got one coconut, so we can add coconut milk to the vegetable soup. The coconut is also from our garden. :)

We borrowed this coconut scraper from our neighbor. I wanted to do it, but I was really awkward, so my dad gave me some tips. Though in the end, he had to finish it, as I'm in charge of peeling and cutting the vegetables. Dad only had to buy squash from the vegetable shop outside.

Here's our delicious and nutritious vegetable soup from our and our neighbor's gardens. We delivered a big bowl of this nutritious food to Manang Lourdes as well.

That's it for today. See you next time for another garden-related post! (^^,)/