This is Lawang Bato

I hope that one day, everyone will have a farm. Or that every house would have a backyard farm. Not just a garden with sprawling grass, a few santan flower bushes, a fancy fountain, nor a Mary statue enshrined in a mini stone cave at the corner as in most big houses I've been to. But real soil with growing greens. Perhaps even a tree. 

I never grew up in a house big enough for even a garden. And if ever there were some extra space, it's concrete and loaded with things that were supposed to be of use, but are still there for the longest time, unused. 

So it was a childhood dream to climb up a tree house and do all my secret things there: journaling, tearing pieces of paper and making them into papier mache, celebrating my doll's birthday...

When I thought having a tree house was perhaps way impossible, I hoped for just a swing tied on to a high branch. That can make for hours of endless joy for every kid.

So it came as a surprise when one day, decades past my childhood dream, my dad said we have a farm. He had purchased a lot which has not been built on, and may pretty much be a city version of a forest.

While I've been to the Arroceros Forest Park right by Quiapo, and thought that it's a fairy tale of a story to be walking in the woods just after alighting a jeep, our city farm is far from being a secret garden that I had envisioned it to be. 

A poultry farm on one side, a warehouse on the other, a public elementary school across, grassy empty lot behind. This pretty much paints a picture of a suburban land that is either awaiting development or was simply left forgotten. 

The random sproutings of banana and mango trees are pillars of its past, remembered. The buried cassava is testament to its resiliency, hidden. The grassy patches and stony grounds are inching each for its own land space, a constant battle. And the voices of teachers and students through the rustle of leaves echo that life and knowledge are being breathed onto it.

This is Lawang Bato. A farm in the city. Because really, like a tree house, it doesn't quite matter where you are and what's around, as much as what's inside.