Long essay on my favourite tree
Answers
When I was a child, I liked climbing up the mango trees growing in our small neighbourhood. Summer vacations were my most anticipated season where the mango trees were bearing the most fruit. Given my little weight back then, I would be the one reaching the highest fruits hanging on thinner branches with my net. Of course I would very mindful of my steps as one wrong move, and I would break my bones at the foot of the tree. Also I would need to take extra care in not disturbing the lines of huge, red ants. Fortunately in my mango tree climbs, I did not so much as fell from the tree. I could already guess by sight if a particular branch could not hold my weigh so I that I could adjust my path to the mangoes. It was like reaching out for the green trophy in the sky.
My friends below would be holding a long cloth where to catch the fruits. After gathering the fruits, I would take home my share. Papa would rinse these with water to get rid of the sticky sap. He would prepare our favourite dip: a mixture of soy sauce, sugar and chilli, Sometimes we would have bagoong for our dip, or the sautéed shrimp paste. My younger sibling on the other hand, was fond of making brown sugar for the dip. Papa used to say that the most nutritious part of the fruit was its skin, so we preferred eating the green, unripe mangoes without peeling it. Or even if we peeled the unripe mangoes, we would still be eating its skin. The sour mango was ideal for us as appetizer. Meanwhile if we wanted sweet mangoes for deserts, we would just buy from the public market. On a fruit, its sweetness was measured in terms of the brix scale, as it could be used to measure minerals in the sap such as sugar (“Use the Brix Scale…” n.d.). Guimaras’ Super Galila mango, one of the most popular sweet mango exportable worldwide, had 22.3 brix score, which was literally tasting sugar juice (“Guimaras Super Galila”, 2016).
There were about six (6) known mango varieties in the Philippines, and the Indian mango variety was the most common and popularly known as a street food. The mango trees grown in our neighbourhood were the usual Indian mango variety. This mango variety, coming from India’s Alphonso Mango, was most common in the suburban areas as it could grow anywhere and could adapt to the tropical climate. The fruit was round-shaped with thick flesh, slight tart, firm and fibrous flesh. Then there was also the Carabao mango variety (manggang kalabaw in Filipino) which was known as champagne mango. When raw, this was sour and green. When ripe, this would become orange-yellow and very sweet. Its flesh was very tender and juicy with very few fibers. This variety had been developed into different strains exportable worldwide. Next was the apple mango variety which had similar characteristics as the Indian mango, only bigger and with a reddish tinge on one part. Fourth variety was the horse mango (manggang kabayo) which had an elongated shape and best eaten raw. Its taste was tartly and it had firm flesh and large seed. The fifth variety was the pajo or pahutan mango which was very sweet, juicy, and fibrous. Then there was the evergreen mango which retained its green color when ripe. One could tell if this was overripe as yellow specks around the fruit would be noticeable. It had a round shape, with taste and texture similar to the carabao mango. And lots of other mango varieties not anymore mentioned here (Shellany, 2017). I have not tasted most of the mangoes in the list, as they would either be more expensive or could not be found in our local markets