DAY 33: Community Lockdown

   DOGS: I think people who have dogs have  better time adjusting to the lockdown. 

   Being in the company of a dog is big psychological benefit to it's owner. But usually dogs in the Philippines dogs are not really pets,  they are more of a utility animal, a guard dog tied to near the doors or caged or loosed in the yard to warn of tresspasers or of coming visitors. So most of dogs are not treated the way most dog lovers that I see on foreign TV do e.g. sleeping with them, sharing food mouth to mouth, licking their owners faces, etc.  

    Though I cannot pet or play really close with my dogs because of my asthma,  just watching them race, fight, and do other funny things already releases some of the tensions for the day.  

    Unfortunately for Koko he is too big for the hammock now. When I let him in once when he was still a puppy, he  kept standing up and couldn't even keep his balance. He did not like the swinging, maybe felt dizzy. He clawed on my tummy, scratched my legs and arms.

   Koko is not a lap dog, he is more of a hunting or sporting dog or a wild animal.

   Instead this morning, he jumped on my chair first. I am forced to rub his neck and belly to get him out of it.

    Keeping dogs means including them in the budget. I buy a kilo of chicken feet or innards for them to last a week. These two eat more rice than the three of us humans. 

  LETTUCE AND STRINGBEANS- The lettuce and string beans that I planted a few days back have already sprouted. A few days more and I will have to transplant the lettuce to their individual plastic containers. I will be making trellis's for the string beans too. 

   SAMBONG- I collected sambong plant from hiway 2000 a few years back. Now I have to cut them down regularly or else they would overrun my other plants depriving them of sunlight. I also see sambong saplings growing everywhere and I uproot them or else our yard would become a sambong colony. I have already given away a lot of them to the neighbors.

     I am curious about how they propagate because I can't see any seeds on the platns and if the propagation is done by root branching, some of the saplings are too far away from any mother plants. Hmmmm...

   I read about the pharmacologic properties of sambong and it is a good natural diuretics and it helps with detox, UTI, lowering BP, anti inflammatory,etc. 

   I drink sambong tea once or twice a week.