DAY 22 (Community Quarantine)

      BACK ACHE- I think I may have overdone my gardening. Pulling weeds, moving pots, removing rocks, squatting on hours for almost three weeks have taken its toll on my back. It hurts.

      I am not young anymore and an overnight sleep is not enough to recover from the sore muscles and to rest the bones. 

    It is not that bad. I do not feel it when I am standing up or laying down, it only hurts when I am sitting down. 

   I need two to three days of rest.

    PROCRASTINATION- I have been planning to do the paper works for my students' school files since the start of the lock down but I never got around it. Whenever I sit down to face it, I think of the  free days still ahead, I think of plants, I think of a lot of things but not the school forms. 

     It is still a week before the lock down ends, though I suspect there will be an extension or there will be an easing up fro industry workers so that manufacturing can get back on gears. But with the cases still going up, it may still be up a month or so.

     It is a good thing that I had the foresight to bring home the papers before the lockdown because teachers are now forbidden to return to school due to covid. I can do the work at home.

     I am taking a break from my plants and will be focusing my energy to the task, which I do not like by the way  

     It is time to finalize my pupils' grades, fill up the student permanent records (f137), check and recheck, etc.. 

    I write for fifteen minutes, lie down for a while to rest my back, then return to work. 

     LETTUCE- Most of the lettuce, all of them actually, I buy are wilted. I guess it's the distance and hours  the vegetable travel from up north to down here in Cainta that saps the crunchiness out of them.

     One of the things I do to bring back a little life into the leaves is I wash the leaves without drying. Then I put it in an airtight container or a plastic bag to refrigerate.      

      I keep them in the ref from seven in the morning until lunch or dinner, so I do not know the exact duration before the leaves regain a bit of life, maybe, at least an hour or longer (maybe even less). 

    Then I take it out, wash it again and serve. It is greener and somewhat fresher than when I bought it.

     MANGO- It's mango season. Our mango tree is fruiting and I can see clusters of little fruits but they are too high for me to climb or to hook the fruits. Bats eat them so the little ones are falling to the ground, aborted little mangoes.

    I am thinking of cutting the tree down to lower it and at the same time to thicken the trunk. But I am having second thoughts because this tree is a grafted one and from reading, grafted trees are not as tough as the naturally matured ones. It may not survive the operation.

     NORMAL- Nothing has not changed in the border. It still easier to get into Taytay than into Cainta.

     Still not used to seeing few vehicles in an otherwise very busy thoroughfare. I can only imagine the rush, the noise, and the smoke when the quarantine is over.

    Chaos.