San Vicente Botanical Garden: Nature's Art in Plants

 San Vicente Botanical Garden

Nature's Art in Plants

Dr Abe V Rotor

 Ornamental Pineapple - Ananas comosus champaca

Purple Sampaguita

Luminescent inflorescence of Abaniko (Belamcanda chinensis)

Nail polished tip Bromeliad

Inflorescence of Caballero (Caesalpinia pulcherrima)

glows at sunset

Inflorescence of Bromeliad

Velvety metamorphosed leaves appearing like petals around 

tiny flowrs of Dona Luz (Mussaenda Philippica),

Dehiscent Rosary Beads (Abrus precatorius) in action

Elephant's Ear Colocasia

Compound thorns of Cherry 

Transparent leaves of avocado (Persia Americana)

Radial symmetry of anahaw ( Saribus rotundifolius)

 Polygonal symmetry of  croton (Codiaeum variegatum)

Living with Nature centerpiece: San Vicente Botanical Garden 

Wall mural inspired by the swarming of certain organisms like doves 

and butterflies. ~

Sinarapan – Smallest Fish

 Sinarapan – Smallest Fish

Dr Abe V Rotor

 Sinarapan fish in Lake Buhi

Sinarapan, scientifically known as Mistichthys luzonensis is the world's smallest commercially harvested fish and is found in Lakes Bato and Buhi in Camarines Sur in the Bicol Region. Another goby, Pandaka pygmaea, also found only in the Philippines, is the smallest known vertebrate and may be endangered.

Sinarapan, from the root word sarap or tasty, is a rare fish species found only in Lake Buhi in the Bicol Region. It is the smallest fish in the world of commercial value.  Overfishing and deterioration of its natural habitat have placed sinarapan under the list of threatened species, a prelude to the category of endangered species, a step away from extinction.

What attracts buyers and connoisseurs other than curiosity?  

Well, like the dulong (ipon Ilk) it is indigenous which means it is a native delicacy, which not for long, it became commercialized. Dried sinarapan is quickly fried and served as shown in the photos. Its taste in not extraordinary, but you are eating the smallest commercial fish in the world and that’s something special. What with hundreds of helpless individuals in one bite!  Thousands in your plate, their large eyes focused on you. Personally, a first time experience is enough, and that would help conserved the species. ~

The Science and Art of Making Wine the Practical Way (Article in Progress)

The Science and Art of Making Wine the Practical Way 

Dr Abe V Rotor

Table wine from 10 different local fruits produced by the author 

in his home cellar in San Vicente, Ilocos Sur as shown below. 

 

Age appears best in four things: Old wood to burn, old wine to drink,

 old friends to trust and old authors to read. – Francis Bacon

 

Wisdom and Wit and Wine  - avr

Wine and friends are a great blend. – Ernest Hemingway.

Love, like wine, gets better with time.

Wine is bottled poetry. -Robert Louis Stevenson

A good day starts with good coffee, and ends with good wine.

The connoisseur does not drink wine but tastes of its secrets. – Salvador Dali

If a glass of wine is good for you, imagine what a bottle can do.

Wine is sunlight held together by water. – Galileo

Wine improves with age. The older I get, the more I love it.

Age appears best in four things: Old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read. – Francis Bacon

I love everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines. -Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield.

 

Art Expression with Glass and Rocks

 Art Expression with Glass and Rocks

Dr Abe V Rotor

The Unwilling Waterfall

Make the waterfall fluid, yet unwilling,

like Dali's Melting Clock;

then down escapes cascading and free,

for today's life is like that. 

Pebbles - Unending Treasure 

 Survivors of eons of grinding and polishing 

 into gems along the stream onto the shore,

I pick these pebbles for my indigenous art;

for orator Demosthenes, his voice culture;

 craftsmen an unending source of treasure.

Flow Gently Little Stream

 Flow Gently Little Stream

Treasured poem of Robert Burns in high school taught by Mrs Socorro Villamor, my teacher in literature in the late 1950s at Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepcion (now Divine Word College of Vigan), to whom this book manuscript is dedicated. I find the melody and lyrics of the poem inspiring and soothing in bringing peace and serenity to modern living.  There are poems contained in this manuscript reflective of Burn's poem, which are accessible in this Blog  avrotor.blogspot.com and its extension naturalism - the eighth sense

FLOW GENTLY SWEET AFTON

           Robert Burns

Flow gently sweet afton among thy green braes

Flow gently I'll sing thee a song in thy praise

My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream

Flow gently sweet afton, disturb not her dream

Thou stock dove whose echo resound through the glen

Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den

Thou greencrested lapwing thy screaming forbear

I charge you, disturb not my slumbering fair

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills

Far marked with the courses of clear winding rills

There daily I wander as noon rises high

My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye

How pleasant thy banks and sweet valleys below

Where wild are the woodlands, the primroses blow

There oft, as mild evening weeps over the lea

The sweet scented birk shades my Mary and me

Thy crystal stream, afton, how lovely it glides

And winds by the cot where my Mary resides

How wanton the waters her snowy feet lave

As gathering sweet flowers, she stems thy clear wave

Flow gently sweet afton among thy green braes

Flow gently sweet river, the theme of my lays

My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream

Flow gently sweet afton, disturb not her dream. ~

25 Homes and Nests of Different Organisms

  25 Homes and Nests of Different Organisms  

Lesson in Biology: Describe each of these abodes of organisms, and present it as a research or a special project in class. 

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature School on Blog

Orb spider

Ensconced porcupine in a hollow log

Spent finch nest

Earthworm castings

 

Burrow of mole cricket (Gryllotalpha africana), right

Termite mound and comb (Macrotermes gilvus)

Nest of a colony of fire ant (Solenopsis geminata)

Barnacles

Pit of antlion

Paper Wasp or Putakti 

 Sea Turtle

Clown Fish and Sea Anemone 

 Tree Rat

 Wild Honeybees

Bird's Nest in a City  

Parrot Fish on Coral Reef

 Egg Froth of Frog 

  Green Tree Ants Nest 

Drynaria fern on Acacia 

 Colony of mushroom on dead wood

Furniture Beetle Larva and Adult

Colony of Moss on Rock

 

 Cockroaches on Garbage

 Crustaceans and Coelenterates live at the base 
of coconut trees on the seashore

Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) author with Ms Melly C Tenorio 738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday