Growing your own food isn’t a rocket science, it is very simple when you have the desire and will to do it. As a kid, I grew up with my family doing backyard gardening, to sustain our daily needs at home.  We planted string beans, egg plants and ladies fingers, which became very helpful to us, because having a harvest means free meal or viand.

Today, my father still do backyard gardening and it was very beneficial to us in health and somehow in our food expenses, as it saves us from buying fruits and vegetables which are present in my father’s garden.  Growing vegetables at home does cost a bit on seeds and supplies, as we don’t have a large backyard, most often my parent’s plant vegetables on empty cans and bags.

The other day, my father came home  with ripe papayas after tending his garden, as we still have the pineapple he harvested the previous day, and the bananas he harvested a week ago, which was keep in our old fridge to ripe, we took photo of it, amaze what a simple gardening can do.

Since we can’t eat them all, my father brought some of the fruits to his employer’s house to share, which he always did.  They were very kind and helpful to us, and even treat my family just like no other. When my grandmother died, they’re the one who lend us a large sum of money without batting an eyelashes, so we could all go home for my grandmother’s funeral, they also give work to my father, even it wasn’t needed, so it is just right to share our blessings to good people, right?

A few months ago, I decided to quit my job, because I have enough. I felt unappreciated and it is already toxic at work, I am not feeling happy with what I am doing already. Those who know me, know what I mean.

Anyway, quitting made me my niece’s caregiver which isn’t a problem at all, but when I quit working, my father lost his carpentry job, and his employer went to Manila for personal matters. With this, my younger sister worked alone to support the family of five, it was not too burdensome at first, but as the day went by, our finances were going down the drain, and whatever small savings we had were slowly deteriorating. My mother started to show signs of stress, was short of patience, and was always nagging and angry at everything, maybe because of the problem of budgeting.

One of my immediate supervisors at work, encouraged me to return to the office by applying through the boss, with the problem arising at home, I did and to cut the story short I can work in the office with different responsibilities and a bit different environment.

Working was great, there were few overtimes, but it was good. Fast forward, the election came and a lot of changes happened, the office had a budget shortage for wages of job orders, don’t ask me the reason and how the budgeting is done because I don’t know either.

Being good at your job doesn’t matter, all job orders were lay-off and only a few or a handful were asked to return first, those who hold a special place at work. Right now, we are still waiting if we will be called/hired again and in the meantime I am jobless, I found a time to write again.

The pandemic made the world stops, it cleans busy roads and made people to stay home.  Anyway, after three years of not celebrating town fiesta, finally Odiongan was able to held one, simpler than the previous celebrations. Simpler in the sense, that there is no street dancing today and there is no Kanidugan Festival dance competition.

The highlights of today town fiesta is a float parade participated by clusters of barangays and some government agencies.  The town parade almost didn’t take place because it rained that day, and it is still drizzling when it happened.

Well, I really have no plans of going to town and watch the float parade, but thinking it was a first for my niece, we did go to town for her to see the floats and people. We went there, when it was already starting and we decided to find a good spot and location where we can see the whole parade without skipping anything.

[ Some floats have dancers to make the parade merrier and festive.]

There are only few floats, there are more people and groups who joined the town parade, especially fraternities and organizations, there was a short program in the town plaza after, but we didn’t see it anymore, we went home right after we saw the tail of the parade.

As you can see, the rain didn’t stop the people from going out, because the parade was already a big event after three years of community quarantines, as you know Philippines is still not mask free, and maybe there are still unreported cases until today. Well, who  will have the guts to report you are sick, by the way? Even me, maybe I will not tell anyone I have symptoms when I know that you and your family will be isolated without food to eat. LOL