The Overgrown Malunggay Tree

My neighbor exposes my lack of pruning and ability to speak in Filipino.

“Are you the owner of the overgrown Malunggay tree?”

Some dude at my gate is asking. He speaks in Filipino and I understand what he’s saying. But then I try to reply.

My Tagalog is pretty much that of a four-year-old, so we’re off to a great start. Plus, there’s the part where I have to translate from English to Filipino in my head, which is like Windows/386 trying to compute quantum physics. I stammer and explain that indeed, I am the owner of the overgrown tree.

He looks at me like I’m on fentanyl.

Here’s the deal. In my backyard is a multi-trunk malunggay (moringa) tree. Its leaves are used in chicken tinola, yum. You can also make malunggay juice from it, although how, I don’t know. I just buy the powdered stuff from S&R.

Malunggay is perhaps best known for its antiseptic qualities. When I was growing up in Iloilo, if you had a cut and there was no rubbing alcohol or betadine lying around, you’d crush malunggay leaves, squeeze the juice into your wound, and wince hard.

Once, when I had a severe case of sore eyes that refused to go away, I tried squeezing malunggay juice directly onto my eyeballs. What could go wrong? The pain was excruciating, like Satan’s fork stabbing through my retinas and deep into my soul. Ah, the good ol’ days of provincial self-medication. My eyes didn’t heal, of course. And that’s the last time I used malunggay as medicine.

Anyway, those are its better qualities. What most people don’t realize is that malunggay trees are weak and bendy, easy typhoon casualties. They also grow at a terrifying pace and if left unchecked, can dominate your backyard, like weeds on steroids.

Mine was planted as a twig. In a couple of years, it was providing shade.

Now, I’ve always managed to prune this beast. At some point, however, it grew taller than I could reasonably cut down on my own. So, I did what all self-respecting men do when faced with a problem that threatens to get worse over time: I ignored it.

Turns out, when you ignore a malunggay tree, it just continues shooting up like the magic plant in Jack and the Beanstalk. I woke one day to find the little twig of yesteryear was now four trunks of various sizes, thrusting into the sky, one of them bent precariously over my neighbor’s very tall metal fence.

Which brings us to now.

“Leaves and dead branches keep falling into our yard,” my neighbor explains. “I’ve got a swimming pool and kids. It’s dangerous.”

I can hardly argue. I have kids too. I’d be miffed if someone’s overgrown malunggay tree was bending over my yard, threatening to crack the heads of my little ones. Although at least there will be plenty of antiseptic.

I keep this to myself and say I’ll handle it over the weekend. He’s not keen. “Can’t you do it sooner?” he asks.

I start to panic. A) I’m not a lumberjack, B) I know how heavy a 20-foot malunggay trunk is (answer: quite heavy), and C) how on earth do I chop down a tree that is bending over my neighbor’s house, all the weight of its upper branches threatening to crush his swimming pool, his yard, his kids, his all?

I do some mental calculations. OK, I can probably do it. Best case scenario is a bunch of leaves and branches fall into his backyard.

He seems to read me. “I don’t want any leaves and branches falling in my backyard.”

I tell him not to worry. We exchange numbers so I can warn him in advance, and he can lock his kids inside while I do timber surgery. He thanks me, gets on his scooter, and flies off.

The next day, I determine to cut the trees down. No point procrastinating. I order my son Chuck to help me.

The plan? Take a trunk, hack it at a reasonable point and then, with Chuck on the wall holding the tree in place, gently lower it to the ground and continue hacking until it’s safe to let fall.

My tool? A cleaving knife. It’s all I’ve got.

We start work on the trunk that looks easiest to handle. It doesn’t take long to hack - malunggay trees are soft and pliant. After 30 to 40 whacks, I’ve chopped through.

It falls with a crash, its upper branches whooshing into a different neighbor’s yard. The people renting the place are Chinese and I brace myself for some wild threats in Mandarin. Nothing happens.

Cool, they’re not home.

We spend the next half hour chopping down the two other trunks we know we can handle.

I cut my finger. I develop a blister from the knife handle. But things go fairly well.

We get to the final trunk, the one that’s bending directly over my neighbor’s pool and kids. I pray and start to hack.

You know when you tackle a problem and things take a magical turn and start working out?

Yeah, that doesn’t happen. The bark cracks and the tree snaps, falling onto the neighbor’s tall metal fence, breaking several decorative arrow heads on top. Branches and leaves rain all over his swimming pool.

I hear loud voices. The neighbor is freaking out. I tell my son, perched on the wall like Spiderman, to tell him I texted earlier. Apparently, he didn’t get the memo.

We continue. After a lot of careful maneuvering, slow, tactical trimming of several upper branches, and enough sweat to fill the neighbor’s pool, we finally twist and pull the remaining log into our yard, where I chop it in to more manageable pieces.

The neighbor texts me to say sorry, my messages came in late. He thanks me in Filipino. I reply in Taglish and offer to pay for his damaged fence. He doesn’t reply. Or he doesn’t understand a word I’ve texted. I guess we’re all good.

I had safely ignored this infernal tree for months. But my neighbor forced my hand, which is just as well. If he hadn’t complained, I probably would have let it grow beyond the reaches of time and space, or until its branches had crept into his bedrooms like alien tentacles, curling around his children in the night.

He called me out and I had to act. Thanks to him, we’re both rid of the pesky malunggay. 

I look at my yard. The timber is now stacked in an ugly pile of dead logs and wilting branches which I will safely ignore for the foreseeable future.