Return to summer

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Summer is here. I know, its just February, and we haven’t even celebrated Valentine’s yet, but anyone of you who’s gone out at high noon or early afternoon during the last days will agree, the hot season has come a bit too early.  Well, at least here in Bacolod, high noon and early afternoon sun can be killingly hot.

Yesterday at around 1 p.m. I was on the road and although I was inside the car,  I could feel some heat penetrating through. In fact that was how I first noticed summer was here – the heat was piercing through the glass, and made its presence felt even with the airconditioning on. Exactly how it is, during the summer which we used to know came towards the end of March and ended in the last days of May.

Adding to the summer scenario are the fruit vendors – ever noticed how they have proliferated in the city of late, especially the ones using tricycles? – who hawk those golden mangoes and red watermelon slices that are the seasons’ icons.

Of course these fruits are now available all year through, thanks to genetic and other manipulation that have allowed their seeds to defy seasonal realities and their trees tricked into thinking they must flower even when it isn’t their time yet

 Don’t you think there is a connection here? Don’t you think that we are getting this crazy weather because we have disrupted the natural life course of trees and plants, forcing them to flower even when they are not supposed to?

Anyone looking for a connection between what we put in our mouths to eat and how the sun turns need only to look into the story of our present-day watermelons and mangoes.

I am not a scientist, but this is not folk superstition either. Our desire to control creation by forcing plants and trees to flower when we want them to have damaged the entire biological kingdom, bringing on a whole gamut of biological realities, including climate change.

Thank God we are seeing only extreme and crazy weather patterns. Other parts of the planets are seeing melting of glaciers and killer floods. But as they say, climate change is global, and while we used to think it was something that happened only in other places, now we are seeing and feeling it right now, right here.

I don’t know if this can still be reversed, but it should interest everyone that in many parts of the world now, especially in urban and suburban areas where there are plenty of enlightened citizens, the move to put everything back on track is on.

People are now realizing the folly of genetic manipulation and other agricultural trickery that were once hailed as convenience for our farmers. People are now choosing, for example, veggies with some parts eaten by insects over the supposedly beautiful, perfectly shaped ones because the former has proof it wasn’t sprayed with deadly pesticides.

Now, we are changing our mental pictures of what is a beautiful and delicious-looking  fruit. Many of my more learned friends, for instance, prefer small guavas over the huge apple guavas – they are appropriately tart and juicy, the way nature meant guavas to be.

Hopefully, we can still win this war and turn things around – return  those summer fruits to summer, and summer itself to its rightful months, before we get swept away by the next natural disaster.*

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