What just happened?" I ask aloud, shaking my head to dispel the fog
clouding it.
"Pa?" "Honey!" I called out for my husband. "Paaaa!" I shouted, my voice slicing through the stillness, desperation lacing each syllable.
Silence hung in the air, a hea...
For thousands of years, people have used a plant's appearance to divine its medicinal properties. It was a broad concept called the "doctrine of signature."
A primeval belief that a plant's appearance, features, or characteristics may resemble, in some way, the condition of our body part that the plant could treat.
I was amused, not out of disbelief, but because I was delighted like a child, shown a magic trick for the first time. It filled me with wonderment.
"Makalingaw, Nai." It does make me smile when I see it flourishing in large, glorious clumps under the sunlight, I told her. "Now, doesn't that joy keep one feeling young?"
She spat sideways, then gave me a knowing, deep red spit-bubble smile. Her stained teeth, from chewing betel nuts, showed briefly.
That is serious. Nai never smiles.
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I pursued Nai to tell me more.
I loved it when I learned that due to its strong aroma, it helps repel insects, especially mosquitos and other nefarious critters that destroy our plants.
Oh, but I loved it even more, when I discovered its smell was powerful enough to discourage those sinuous vagrants! Yup, those meandrous slithering pests do occasionally stray up or trash our garden. We found their molted skins left behind after they had shed.
I shuddered at the thought of such a disturbing sight. But this is to be expected, as it is a common occurrence in this environment. After all, we live in a wilderness teeming with these odd and unfamiliar creatures!
"Nai, does it repel monitor lizards too?" I hoped.
Nonetheless, Ayu Indah became my new favorite.
Summer days and hot, sunny spots are when and where it thrives, blooms, and flourishes profusely. And if, by chance, it sprouts on a shady green, it will crawl relentlessly, clinging on to anything it grabs, with its little corkscrew-like tendrils for support, as it heaves itself up, until it sees the light.
Ayu Indah can be found cascading over the faces of cliffs in certain areas of the mountain. It drapes it in varied hues of violet, carpeting slopes or creeping over rocky nooks and crevices, reaching to the tops of trees.
It wound its way above the roof, past hedges and even up and around huge bamboo trunks until it reaches its very tip-topmost branch, where it bursts into wantonly radiant blossoms in the sun's blazing light. Many people mistook it for bamboo flowers with petals dangling down its sides.
Its lavish mass of exotic bouquets usually appears between August and October. But mine seems to flower all year round!
Now, how did it come about? One wonders. Or how did it get here?
"Kinsay gatanom ani Nai? Who planted these? "I asked Nai casually one afternoon.
"Dih gyud ta masayud ana, Ma'am, No one knows for sure," Nai Ceri told me.
"Pero naay tumotumo." But there is a myth she mentioned that is connected to it. "Gi hong-hong sa mga gulang." Whispered through oral traditions that had been passed down through the ages tell a story that is exceedingly old, she said.
