Growing Rainbow in a pot

 

I'm growing the Rainbow tree in a pot in one corner of the terrace. I'm growing Rainbow in a pot. The pot with the growing Rainbow is in my terrace. I go there everyday--in the morning to water it and later, in the midst of my editing works, when I could no longer bear the tangle of verbs and nouns and phrases and feel I would suffocate, I'd knock at Sean's room to let me go to the terrace to see the Rainbow plant growing there. At different times of day, I invent excuses to go to the terrace to see the Rainbow tree growing. I'd like to bring it to my room so that I could sleep with it near my bed, if the Rainbow could take so much stress of being carried to my room inside the pot, its stem and leaves swaying before I could finally put it down on the floor. 

Resplendent tree

Actually, I've been telling anybody who cared to listen that I'd rather live in Upper, where the land is so expansive and neighbors are so far away, they will not be complaining about trees growing so tall they almost touch the sky. In that other place where I grew up, neighbors seem to regard trees as if they were enemies. 

They become very suspicious and cautious when they see a tree growing in your lot untrammelled. It was so infuriating when I heard someone say they were already quite afraid of a tree growing in our lot because it was already so tall, they were afraid it might fall. Then, there were those concerns about electric wires, or trees whose branches already overlapped into the next property. Once, a neighbor actually approached me saying I had to kill that tree growing high near our window because that was a Balete, a habitat for the enkanto. 
So, I said, I wouldn't want to live in that place where people regard trees like enemies. Or something they could cut for firewood. I would like to live in Upper, where I thought I could grow trees as much as I wanted to. I would cover the whole area with dipterocarp, I said. 
But the last time I was in Upper, I came upon somebody I did not know who told me this narra growing high along the roadside might already be interfering with the electric wires and might have to be cut off eventually. I was seething inside. 

Beautiful Balete at the Makati Circuit

Just to honor this old Balete tree inside the Makati Circuit where I used to jog every morning maybe five years or so ago because it's only recently that I recognised it to be a Balete tree.  I used to hover and stare at it when I went to take a look at the nearby Pasig river just a couple of steps away and those strange cargo boats passing by, I would turn around to find the tree, fascinated by its thick trunk that looked like roots or branches, wondering what it was, wanting to communicate to the tree because I, too, felt totally abandoned, cast off in that place. I wanted the tree to communicate to me and I never knew it was actually talking to me at that time and it's only now, years later, that I finally hear and understand.  I hope you thrive, beautiful Balete!