When it rains, it’s four

Summer skipped Baguio this year – from the cold spell from January to mid-March, we went straight to “when it rains, it’s four.” That’s so Baguio though – bright, blue skies in the mornings and then rains in the afternoon just before sunset. But not in March and April.

It cannot be denied, climate change is upon us and if we don’t do something about it now...

I’ve started to till the lawn a few weeks ago, but progress has been very slow. After about half an hour of digging every couple of days or so, I’ve only managed to clear out an area of roughly 10 square meters. We had a concert a couple of weeks ago and things got really busy the last couple of weeks before that. But it’s summer, no rush, I thought. At the pace I was going, I would have been done with tilling, preparing the lawn for re-sodding, in time for the late May showers to keep them hydrated.

But nature had other things in mind – the rains came early this year, and the grass is making a comeback in the area I’ve previously cleared out. And the rest of the lawn that I have yet to touch has grass growing halfway up my knees already. The rosemary patch that I used to weed out every couple of days or so is now almost overrun by weeds – that’s just after a few days of continuous afternoon rain. It’s not easy to keep up with nature when she goes into hyper-mode.

Walking around town the other day, my daughter and I got caught in a torrential rain – with gusty winds that made if feel like a typhoon was upon us. Session Road got covered in a couple of inches of rain rushing down like an angry Bued River. Told her that I think I’d be better off without my leather sandals. She thought I was joking and cringed when I took them off and made a run, with her and I cuddled under a small umbrella, barefoot to cross the road. As soon as she stepped on the rain-blanketed road, her foot served as a dam and water came rushing into her almost knee-high boots. Just wanted to give you an idea of how much water was pouring down Baguio that afternoon. In summer.

So is concreting the Melvin Jones Grounds wise? Does cutting down 182 trees for a concrete parking building make sense? How about hundreds more for a condominium? Most of the natural calamities that have been claiming lives and properties in our country recently mostly involve excessive rains… are we to make matters worse by further diminishing her capacity to protect us from such?

Just think about it.