Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Joyful times. I LOVE Christmas- especially the carols and the nativity scenes. I'd like to share this beautiful Christmas card my cousin sent me:

Let's not forget the real reason for CHRISTmas.

Wishing you all the best,

Tree Frog

Be like a Tree

I've always believed that many, many lessons can be learned from nature. For example, a tree.
Trees have over 22 major functions from cleaning the air and providing good oxygen to helping soften the rain before it reaches the ground so that the plants below can survive.  It also provides food, shelter, shade, and so many other things to both humans and animals/insects. 

Tolerance
Most trees are also friendly. I mean, there are a few nasty thorn trees out there- but it's good that most trees are actually nice. And just think of it- trees don't complain when we come and get their fruits. Nor do they complain if we saw off one of their branches, or even most of their branches and leave them with a mere stump. Trees are tolerant, withstanding great heat, rain, wind, animals living in them, people- well, doing all kinds of things to them.

Giving
In relation to what I said above- well, trees are the epitome of selflessness and giving. I mean, most people would die if they were chopped in half. Trees just grow right back up. Fruits, branches, leaves, wood- all taken away- they keep growing and keep giving as long as they're given a chance to recover. Not very many people could say the same thing.

A friend of mine made the analogy of being like trees. There are some people who are all thorns. They don't give, they don't care, and love to just make everyone else feel miserable because they're miserable. I'm sure we've all had the unfortunate experience of running into these kind of people. (I'm sorry if I've been one sometimes!) Then there are those people who are just wonderful. They don't judge, they love, don't have airs, and have so many gifts to share. I hope one day I'll become more and more like a tree- and not a thorny one!

Have a nice week!

-Tree Frog










 

Hello

A tree frog in a banyan grove...

Typhoon Pedring just hit us. Luckily it wasn't as bad as we expected it to be. Nothing more than a few branches broken for us. I feel really bad for the farmers who lost their crops though.

 The power of nature is awe inspiring. I spent a few hours on the beach yesterday (a safe distance from the waves) just feeling so alive, watching the waves smashing, crashing, booming on the beach, and feeling the wind ripping through. 

Lucky for us the only thing we had to rescue was our volleyball net on the beach when the water started to come in closer:

A few minutes later this is what it looked like:

Needless to say, within a few hours, the whole beach had a different look. And it's looking great for the pawikan. For the past few weeks the beach has been littered with sticks and some logs brought by the sea after the last typhoon. We cleaned off the plastics etc but there's been way too much sticks and logs to pick up all at once. The sea buried the sticks below several feet of sand yesterday, so it's all good. The sand dunes are looking much better and the contours are much better for pawikan to crawl on.

Nature's got her act together. We humans just seem to have a knack of messing with her stringent laws with the foolish and selfish intentions. It's time to start thinking twice where we're heading if we keep living the way we are today.