Monday, July 28, 2008

Home-Grown Pineapple!

I just picked my very first home-grown pineapple from my own garden!
There have been others but I'd never been around to enjoy them; our guests got to have those ones. So this is my very first one!

It is soooo delicious, juicy and sweet. One of the best I've ever eaten - of course! ;-)
About 9" long, not counting the leaves at the top. Just enough for slices to go alongside dinner. :-)

We will plant the top again. That's how my pineapple patch was started - by planting the tops of those we'd bought and eaten. So cool! There are two more coming on, so this will be a repeat performance. :-)

In other news, Mike has finally put up a rain gutter on the side of the house where our new entry is. Yay! No more last-minute showers on us as we run into the house during a rain! Hey, every little bit of dry helps!
Oh, and here's a downpour to test it out... So far, so good.

Yikes! This squall is getting blustery - gotta go close windows. More later.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Mangos or Mangoes?

Well, that is a question, isn't it? I've seen it spelled both ways around here and they both look silly to me, so which one is correct? No matter how it's spelled, mango season is upon us and mango trees all over Puna are loaded with this lusciously sweet and juicy fruit. And for the most part, they go unpicked! The smell of rotting and fermenting fruit hits us suddenly as we drive along the beach road or through the jungle. I'm amazed that more folks aren't out there taking advantage of this free food source. What a waste! The cost in the grocery stores ranges from $2-4 a pound!! In Hawaii!!

Needless to say, Mike and I go out and glean these wonderful fruits as much as we can. There's a tree down the road that we've been picking from, so sweet and yummy. Mike went and bought a long pole picker, the kind with a wire basket and little grab-hooks on the end. Now our evening walks include fruit collecting. Yesterday evening while we were swatting mosquitoes and picking mangos, we met some more of our neighbors who were delighted that the tree next door to their place was being picked. They told us this was a 'piri mango', one of the local Hawaiian types; good for eating fresh or for pickling if the fruit is picked green. We go for the ripes fruits and cut the flesh into cubes to eat. And I've been stashing some bags of cubed mango in the freezer for later. (The neighbors also told us where there were some more good trees just waiting to be picked.) yummmmm....

All our media mail boxes have now arrived and, amazingly, all the books fit in the one bookcase we have! Just. Okay, there are a few on the bedside table (of course). And all my cookbooks take up a shelf in the kitchen - that's normal, right? (I didn't even bring all my cookbooks yet.)

We had a lovely long bike ride today, down the main street in our neighborhood a ways, and then out on the old railroad grade that runs towards Hilo. This is one of our favorite bike rides. It's a dirt and rock road now that stretches on a fairly even grade through what looks like African savanna: wide open grasslands with lovely big shade trees here and there. I keep expecting to see a herd of giraffes strolling off in the distance! Instead, we see the blue, blue ocean on one side (makai) and the distant volcanoes on the other (mauka). Today we could see the smoke, ash & steam plumes from all three vents: Halema'uma'u up at Kilauea Crater, Pu'u O'o Crater further down the rift, and finally the huge plume down at the ocean entry near the Kaimu-Kalapana area. What an awesome sight!

Love and aloha,
Liz

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Back Home Again!

Wow! What a trip! It is sooo nice to be back to our island home - and it really does feel like home.

Lori & Dave's wedding was absolutely perfect, with the two of them just beaming at eachother the whole time. It was really nice to see so many of you, my friends and family. It was just at that most ideal part of springtime when the lilac hedge is in full bloom and there are flowers just everywhere! Even the weather cooperated, just in time.
Moving out of our Idaho home was extremely hard and painful - but it's done now, and that's the end of that.
We found Kerry's cute little studio apartment in Seattle in only 3 days! Spent another week getting her moved in and set up. Managed to have some fun times, too, riding the bus, going into downtown, exploring some of the parks. She's now taking classes at the Bartending Academy, making new friends and connecting with old ones. Going through that hard time of adjusting to living on her own.

As soon as Mike and I landed on the Big Island, we knew we were in the right place, and as we drove to our hale and studio, the sense of coming home after an ordeal settled into our hearts. We wake up each morning thinking how amazing it is that we are living here! Everything was just as we left it, nothing gone amiss, only this: the grass was a foot high and going to seed, jungle-y vines were taking over the fences and creeping into the yard, and my fuzzy Mexican oregano was stretching far and wide along the entire back fence garden! Several days of weeding, mowing, and chopping have got the yard and garden looking well-maintained again.

The avocados and pineapples coming along nicely, making our mouths water in anticipation while just looking at them. Even the little cherry tomato I quickly stuck in the ground the day before we left has grown to a quite large plant and has little green tomatoes forming already! I bought a couple bell peppers, an eggplant, and another tomato and transplanted them all into containers. Also have a couple trays of various seeds started. I know it's pretty late in the season to begin a garden, but it's worth a try, and remember, we don't have a frost date here!

The weather has been beautiful here, although for those who rely on rain catchment systems, it isn't so nice. That's one of the reasons we bought in this particular subdivision: it has it's own water system. The ocean water has been so clear, just great for snorkeling and calm enough that I enjoy swimming out there too. Lovely tradewinds blowing gently.

Went to see the lava flow along the coastline for our Independence Day fireworks display, courtesy of Mother Nature and Madame Pele. There was a lot of fountaining and gushing lava into the ocean, which sends up huge billows of steam and sparks of molten rock. Don't worry, we were probably 1/2 mile away in the County viewing area. Lava was also pouring down the pali (cliffs) above the old Royal Gardens subdivision that has been inundated with flows since the 1980's. And the sky was lit up with the glow of reflected fire - so beautiful in this setting (as opposed to, say, the night-time glow of a forest fire).

Just got the word that the bins and crate that we shipped out of Seattle have arrived in Hilo already. Still have 7 media mail boxes to come.

Until next time,
Aloha, Liz