By Ronald Constantino
PINAY GUIDE – One of the many places Aster Amoyo and I toured during our recent visit to California was the botanical garden in Los Angeles called The Arboretum. Aster’s nephew, Dr. Alvin Cadalin, brought us there, where we enjoyed gazing at the trees and flowers from all over the world.
Those with strong knees could walk all over the huge, huge park, more of a forest really. But Aster, Alvin, and I opted to take the tram, with a charming Pinay as guide. As we went along, she pointed out spots of interest, including waterfall, river, rose garden, birds, and all those trees with varied flowers and fruits.
Aster was delighted to pose with a male peacock strutting all over the place, displaying his magnificent and colorful feathers.
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WHY NOT? – Come to think of it, why not a similar botanical garden in Metro Manila, where there are many open space?
The Philippines has so many trees and flowers which can be planted in a local arboretum. Beautiful trees and flowers like caballero (fire or flame), golden shower, balayong (similar to Japan’s cherry blossom or sakura), waling-waling orchid, milflores, buhok ni Ester, manaog ka irog, kampupot, hasmin, champaca, sampaguita, ilang-ilang.
And majestic trees like molave, kamagong, narra, tindalo, pili, baticuling, banaba, palosapis.
Of course, there’s already La Mesa Eco park, but another one is most welcome, especially if it’s more accessible, with a guided tour. Enjoyable and educational.
At the LA Arboretum we saw newlyweds having their pictorial.
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TITO AL’S COMPANY – As earlier written in Highspeed, our host in Anaheim (near Disneyland) was Tito Al Chu, originally from Tacloban in Leyte. He’s the cousin of Aster, also a Waray from Borongan, Eastern Samar.
Tito Al and Alvin hit it off the first time they met. Alvin asked if he could visit him more often, seeing how much he enjoyed Tito Al’s company. “Most welcome,” was Tito Al’s response.
By the way, Alvin toured Aster and I all over Los Angeles and Long Beach; treated us to sumptuous Chinese buffet and soothing Vietnamese noodle soup in Little Saigon.
