Visiting Our Neighbor's Garden...

When we transferred to this place last December, one of the people who welcomed us was our kind elderly neighbor. Her name is Manang Lourdes, and she used to be the caretaker of the house we're currently living in. One of the reasons why she and my family became close was gardening. She's already in her 70s, yet she's super active.

Gardening is indeed a healthy hobby because we get to move our bodies, enjoy the process, and relax mentally and emotionally after seeing the fruits of our labor. In this post, I'm going to share about Manang Lourdes' garden.

(From the left) My mom, Manang Lourdes's granddaughter, and Manang Lourdes...

Sometimes, Manang Lourdes would invite us over to her place not only to see her garden, but also to give us some of her harvest and some of her seeds and seedlings, so we could plant them in our own garden as well. She actually sells some of her produce, but she usually gives us free harvests. Then, my mom would cook something using them, and we'd give her some of the dish my mom cooked. That's kind of our dynamic. :)

That purple chili always fascinates me. I've never seen a purple chili before, but it eventually becomes red when it's ripe. She gave us some seeds before, and now we have some seedlings in the garden as well. But I'm not sure if they're the purple one of the regular ones because we just mixed them. haha

These are sponge gourds or luffa. It's growing really well, and it's interesting because it's a kind of vine, so it has spread all over the place. It even crawled on her clothesline. hahaha But she's been extending her garden, so her vegetables are growing freely.

I couldn't go to the garden extension farther back, but in there, she has some string beans, more sponge gourds, and eggplants. My family and I are planning to plant some vines like sponge gourd, bitter gourd, and cucumbers in our garden someday. The soil in there isn't very good, so we need to create plant boxes first so we can add better-quality soil for our future vegetables.

As of now, we have finished one circular planter box for our sweet potato tops and water spinach; many more to go.

She also has more plants in front of her house, and even outside her fence. They're mostly leafy plants like some kind of camote tops, moringa, and so on. She also has various seedlings that she's going to replant later on, or maybe sell or give to other people.

In the past, she had a lot of malabar spinach outside her fence, but she harvested and sold them recently. Now, she's trying to grow new ones.

Her granddaughter continued watering her plants in front of their house because she had gone with us to check a plot of land nearby. We're checking the extent of our landlord's property to see if there is some stuff we can do or an area we can use...

These are bonus photos... Another person owns the land behind her and our current place, but it has a lot of coconut trees. Most of the children and teens in our area play around this open space.

Anyway, that's it for our mini tour. My family and I are trying to develop our garden gradually, so I'll post more updates in the days to come.

See you around and have a good one! (^^,)/