Dill is an herb. GardenGuides.com says the botanical name is Anethum graveolens while Botanical.com says it is Peucedanum graveolens. Whatever. Dill is so easy to grow. Sturdy too–mine survived typhoon Milenyo.

Dill flowers are small and white. They don’t usually droop like they do in the photos but these were taken after a downpour. They fly… well, I thought I’d take the photos with the fly so you’d get an idea just how tiny the dill flowers are.

[tags]dill, herb, dill+flowers, white+flowers, Photos, Photo, Photography, Philippines[/tags]

I’m pondering on the nature versus nurture thing again. Siblings raised in the same household, by the same parents and with the same set of rules… well, one would think they’d have more than a few things in common. I have two daughters–Sam, 14, and Alex, 12–and their similarities and differences just amaze me.

They do share things in common: 1) they both wear their hair long and they have the same taste in clothes–T-shirts and blue jeans; 2) they are both gadgets freaks; 3) they abhor badly cooked food; and 4) they loathe colognes and anything with perfume in it, including lotions.

But it’s their differences that are more astounding.

Sam is a prolific writer–even her teachers say so. Alex is the math wiz.

Alex sleeps early and gets up early. Sam only sleeps when she can’t keep her eyes open anymore. On weekends and during vacations, lunch is Sam’s first meal for the day.

Alex knows that no means NO. Sam throws tantrums at the mention of the word NO.

Alex keeps a small, tight circle of friends who share her interests; Sam’s circle is wider and she is more tolerant of people’s differences.

Sam leaves a trail of mess wherever she goes, especially candy wrappers; Alex is acquainted with the trash bin.

And then, there’s their music. Alex used to have this obsession with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phanton of the Opera. In the car, she would insist that the soundtrack be played at least once during every trip, long or short. These days, Alex only listens to the High School Musical soundtrack and the individual albums of the film’s artists.

Although Sam went through the Britney Spears stage, she now considers Britney as “yucky”. These days, Sam listens to everything from Incubus to Jason Mraz to Coheed and Cambria to Parokya ni Edgar. It was Sam who got her father hooked on the Radioactive Sago Project. Sam also loves APO Hiking Society’s music.

Last week, when we had to spend two nights in a hotel during the blackout caused by typhoon Milenyo, my husband suprised me with a CD of The Best of APO. The following night, after dinner at Burgoo, Sam and I stayed behind at Robinson’s Galleria while her father and sister went straight back to the hotel. She said she wanted a cup of frappuccino before going back. But the trip to the cafe was forgotten after she insisted on going to Radio City. She saw the CD of Kami nAPO Muna - Tribute to APO Hiking Society and asked me to buy it for her. By the time we left Radio City, the cafes were closing for the night.

Actually, Sam’s love affair with APO’s music may be rooted to her early childhood. Even as an infant, getting her to sleep was often an ordeal. So I’d sing Show Me Your Smile to her and she would relax, snuggle close and go to sleep.

I started writing this entry pondering on the nature versus nurture thing. I’m ending it wondering how much of the memories from our infancy remain as we grow old. Perhaps, Sam associates APO’s music with the feeling of security and safety of her childhood. Or, perhaps, she simply has good taste in music.

[tags]Music, APO+Hiking+Society, Philippines[/tags]

It rained while I was cooking pasta for lunch. Five minutes after the rain stops is always the perfect time to take photos of the flowers in the garden.

If you want to see the ants up close, click the links to pages 2 and 3.

My daughter Sam’s photo of her feathery ballpen, sibling to the yellow feathery ballpen.

In most of the interviews I have done in the past, one recurring question was “What is a sassy lawyer day like?” The question is probably borne out of the curiosity to find out if I do much else aside from blogging considering how much output I could churn out in a day. Well, I’ll tell you a secret. I can speedread. My mother insisted I take speedreading lessons the summer before I entered the College of Law. That’s how I can write so many things in a day. More often the not, the output is directly proportional with the input.

In short, while the computer stays on most of the day, I am able to do a lot of other things. I have to, really. Until about two months ago, we had no househelp for almost two years. Had I been spending each weekday doing nothing but sit in front of the computer, we would have starved, we would have been wearing filthy clothes, etc. etc. Why am I writing about this? The title says Alfred Hitchcock… yeah, yeah… I’ll get to Hitchcock. I just want you to picture how things were when I stumbled onto Hitchcock’s 1963 film “The Birds”. So bear with me.

When I became an op-ed columnist for Manila Standard Today, reading and writing schedules changed. My stupid notion that writing a column was just like blogging, except that one blog entry gets submitted to the paper first before getting published on my blog, couldn’t be more inaccurate. Sure, it was just a matter of reading and writing–just like blogging. But one thing I didn’t count on was the pressure of deadlines. I had become so unused to following someone else’s schedules, and demands, that for a while I felt completely lost. My daily schedule went awry as I tried to fit in two deadlines each week. And there was a word count for the column too. Unlike blog entries which could be as short or as long as I liked, a column has to have a minimum, and maximum, of so many characters.

In short, to make the hours fit, I arranged it so that everything is distributed throughout the week. Monday and Wednesday mornings are for writing the column, the afternoons are for the food blogs. The remaining days are for The Sassy Lawyer’s Journal and the photo blogs. But then, being me, I never really followed such a strict schedule. It was more like writing what I felt like writing for the day–save for Monday and Wednesday mornings. Except on very few occasions, I wrote my columns on schedule. Well, give or take a few hours and the times I fell asleep when I didn’t mean to.

So, today being a Monday, I fully intended to write my column as soon as I turned on my computer. But I turn on my computer after my morning dose of TV (usually the Travel and Living Channel or a movie) while drinking my interminable cups of coffee. It was while switching channels that I saw a movie called “The Birds” coming up in a few minutes. I don’t know why but I stopped switching channels. The title was unfamiliar and so blase that, normally, I wouldn’t have given it a passing thought. Then, it said in the opening credits that the story was based on a book by Daphne du Maurier. I’m a big fan of Du Maurier. I must have read “Rebecca” at least four times and loved it more with each reading. And then there was Alfred Hitchcock’s name.

Okay, I said, a few minutes won’t kill my timetable. See, I had already written half of the column over the weekend so I wasn’t very worried. It would only take about an hour or so to finish it because the outline was clearly etched inside my head. Unfortunately, the few minutes stretched to more than an hour and a half, and my morning’s schedule got totally screwed. It was one hell of a movie. I always thought that “Vertigo” was Hitchcock’s best work. After seeing “The Birds”, I changed my mind.

The things I discover now that I have changed gears.

I found the Aklatang Pambata website through a button on Jillsab’s sidebar. Its main thrust is to establish, develop and improve community based libraries in the Philippines. Part of its mission is to “make teachers, parents and community members partners in promoting reading in children.”

Aklatang Pambata’s programs include organizing communities to create and man their own libraries and to teach them “how to hold fun activities leading to reading and providing literacy training”. I think the last part is especially important. Adults should learn how to make children appreciate learning by making it a fun and enjoyable experience. Hindi na uso mga terror-type teachers.

What wonderful vision, programs and goal. I feel for this project so much because I can still remember how depressingly inadequate the Caloocan City Public Library was when I was growing up. My mother had more paperbacks than the library books. It was probably that feeling of deprivation that led me to really maximize the use of U.P.’s libraries all those years. It would be good to bring even a fraction of those treasures to children all over the country.

[tags]Aklatang+Pambata, community+libraries, Philippines, children+libraries[/tags]

As far as I know, there is a distinction between mushrooms and fungi although, in cooking, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Cloud ears and wood ears, for instance, are fungi, not mushrooms.

I never noticed them but my daughter did. She took this photo of some wild mushrooms, or maybe they’re fungus (don’t know if they’re edible), growing on the trunk of the banaba tree in the front garden.

[tags]mushrooms, photo, Photos, Photography, Philippines, Sam+Veneracion[/tags]

I didn’t know she was a blogger. She never put her URL in every time she posted a comment on my blog. I’m talking about Rhodora’s ‘Time and Tide’. I spent about 30 minutes reading her entries. As I read, a long-buried (abandoned even) idea was resurrected.

Early this year, I thought about forming a network of Pinoy mommy blogs. Why mommy blogs? Well, shared interests. I’m a mommy. But, more than that, if there is one sector of Filipino blogs that make sense, that would be the mommy blogs. Of course, there are other niche blogs that churn out relevant content. The photo bloggers are doing wonderfully; so are the Pinoy food bloggers and tech bloggers. But how political blogging in the Philippines has turned out has really become a disappointment. There was a time when political blogs made sense. But, these days, anyone who can quote some news report on some political issue labels his blog as a political blog.

Anyway, the idea about a mommy blogs network came after I decided to lie low on political blogging and start writing–again–about social issues that affect family and parents, including marriage and annulment. The plan was to turn one of my domains, mommytalks.com, into a group blog. I was going to invite mommy bloggers to contribute.

Then, I had second thoughts. I started to seriously doubt if I would have the time and the energy to play administrator. Plus, I also wondered if things would turn out the way I envisioned them. Group projects often divert into other directions as personalities and interests clash. Well, I’m rethinking the whole thing again. No group project though. But, perhaps, an aggregator of mommy blogs whose owners signify an interest to be so included. Or there can just be a list of, and links to, Pinoy mommy blogs.

Hmmm… the second alternative sounds better. A blog with the entries posted in alphabetical order. I’ll just keep adding entries as I come across more Pinoy mommy blogs. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. Good thing I have moved the contents of mommytalks.com back to houseonahill.net.