To look a lot like.....
I don't wear shoes when I garden at home.
That I will have an exotic slippa tan for my cross country trek.
If they don't make me wear shoes on the mainland.
Do they make you?
That I have walked through a lot of biological ooze.
I could use a pedicure.
Or scrub harder when I shower.
It's beginning to look a lot like......
I should buy one new pair slippa before I go.
In the Big Picture Show of Life, one of its inevitable truths is fast approaching. "Whatever is subject to arising is subject to ceasing." The vibrant beauty and vitality we see now will fade, wither and decompose. The Noble Truth of Impermanence has come calling.
The first time I heard of this common sense notion was reading the good Dr. Leda's Rose Journal at Regan Nursery. It is easy to go uh huh, yea right and laugh out loud when she writes about it and when the Noble Truth waits in the distance. When Impermanence is knocking at your door it is another matter.
There is a neck and neck race right now to see if the Noble Truth has its way first or if I have to step in because the Noble Truth is slacking off on the job and toying with me.
In the morning sun Greyman casts a long shadow across the lawn as he warms himself in lizard like fashion to a new day. He woke up again. At rest his breathing is rapid. His heart murmur must be getting worse. It has been two weeks since he jumped up to the top of the kitchen butcher block table to do his feed me dance before dinner. Now at 16, getting on and off the coffee table is an effort of much consideration.
He still gets around quite well with his one good eye. The lost one was nerve damage from toxoplasmosis that still causes regular seizures. When they are done contorting his body he purrs.
Greyman is the sweetest cat I have ever known. He will leave a long shadow.
Darkie, the Big Fat Black Thing his entire life has turned into Concentration Kitty. His hips and spine protrude. He walks so slowly and gingerly, wobbling with each step. I think a slug could move faster than him. I check regularly to see if he is still breathing.
His massive consumption of water is a sign of kidney failure or diabetes. At 17 he is not going to the vet for expensive life saving treatment. I am sorry, homey don't have that kind of cash.
They are both still hungry though. They want their dinner and they want it on time. Even more better if it is early and they get two scoops.
Someone is going to have to take them to the other side. I was hoping and will hope until the last minute that it will not have to be me. If it is a burden I should have to carry, a little prayer to my patron St. Christopher to give me strength. There is a fruit tree in the story, how nice.
Listen up Noble Truth of Impermanence, I have been good to you and recycled all my green waste for decades, a lot of it on site. I brought other people's impermanence home to my garden. I gave you your do. I buried animals here that were not even mine when you came calling. Now it is time for you to do your job for me.
Please don't make me do it.
Lost in the sensory overload of a trip to Molokai was this video of the beach at Kalaupapa. What would you guys prefer, more buzzing bees on my 'East Palatka' Holly tree or a visit to the beach on Molokai?
I thought you might like a video with an ocean view more.
If you get a chance watch the PBS NOVA show First Flower. Lots of interesting tidbits on crazed botanists, China being the motherland of temperate horticulture, sex and bugs and lots of other goodies while hunting for the first flowering plant in the fossil record. Plenty pretty pictures too.
Ka Ule o Nanahoa
It is said that this stone can help infertile couples conceive. Women would come with offerings and spend the night with the stone and leave pregnant in the morning.
Offerings at this fertility shrine continue to this day.
Update: March 16th
The backside of Molokai's Phallic Rock looks a lot like a Barcalounger. It would be very easy and maybe even comfortable for a women to spend the night with the Rock and dream sweet dreams of fertility.
If getting pregnant is not what you want then it is wise to carry a big stick with you when visiting the Phallic Rock as this young lady is wise to do.
If I sit and drink coffee in the morning while wandering the internet long enough, the rains will eventually come and I can play hooky from work. No need to dash out first thing in the morning and try to get everything done before it rains. It looked moist out there.
No that was not another earthquake. It was me taking the camera one handed around the house post in the carport.
I am managing to get some paperwork done too.
It is a jungle out there and competition for territory can get fierce and have lasting consequences.
Take this lizard for example. It was spotted a week ago living in the vicinity of the stairs off my back deck. I have been stalking him ever since to capture this anomaly in pixels.
This is a tale of two tails. Some heinous injury must have occurred that didn't leave a clean break.
(A little blurry sorry)
And the incredible ability to grow new parts diverged. It looks as though proper color management does not come back right away. I wonder if at some point an ability to have two tails in different tones will emerge.
Perhaps we should be studying stump cells as well as stem cells.
I think these two big boys living in the same general location recovering from tail trauma may have been going at it with each other.
Maybe the Intelligent Design folks and the biological scientists at Liberty University and Oral Roberts University could figure out the truth about creation and discover new miraculous medical technologies in a palatable cell format using stump cells. The lizards would not have to be killed to get these cells. Lizards do virgin births too. That may interest them.
Life six feet off the ground perched high on top of the regal blossoms of the Torch Ginger looks much safer. Apparently there are good pickings to the last true flower, long after their freshness has faded.
Every time I turn my computer on or off
I see an image of my future.
This country road will take me home.
The entrance to my gravel driveway
will be three to four hundred feet
around the bend in the road
on the right hand side.
At the moment this road may be dusted with a covering of snow.
The trees are bare.
I bet it is cold.
Now is when the bones of my future garden
will need to be strong.
Very early Monday morning before dawn the strong Kona Winds brought in a line of showers that have put out the fire burning on Haleakala's south west face. In Kona Winds this side of the mountain becomes the windward side and the moist air hitting the 10,000 foot tall volcano rises and drops rain on the upcountry area.
We had rain in Kihei as well from this low pressure front. At higher elevations the rain fall totals were probably higher.
You can just make out part of the burned area on the right side of this shot. Clicking on the picture will enlarge it on another page. The darker colored upper part of the forest that burned forms a line running below and parallel to the ridge line of the mountain. This section of the forest is above the narrow band of grassland that separates the two sections of forest.
The fire burned all the way to the summit and over on the southern end. It is topped with clouds this morning from the continuing Kona Winds. More rain is expected in the next couple of days. This is the first time the volcano has appeared from under the clouds in the last 24 hours.
If you arrived via a search, a video and pictures of the Fire can be seen by clicking this link. There are other links to views of the fire on the right hand menu and a link to the Maui News too.
I did a pretty good job of capturing the sights and sounds of gale force winds blowing through the trees and palms without getting the horrible sound caused by the wind when it hits the tiny microphone on my tiny camera by standing on the protected side of the house.
While waiting for this video to upload I heard a loud noise from something blowing over.
( There is a definite downgrade in image quality in the YouTube format. Why is that? On my Kodak Viewer it is clear as can be.)
I went outside to see what it was and saw that my neighbor's Hideous Plastic House including the truck camper shell top suspended from the rafters had blown over the fence and into my yard. He was home doing lots of remodeling work and we took it apart and had it out of there in five minutes with no damage really to the plants.
My little Slice of the Sky just got a teensy bit better. Praise be to the Gods of Wind.
I have been getting quite a few hits to the blog from the search words "Polipoli Fire." So I went out and did a video update for Saturday 1-27-07 at 1:30pm. This was just before the regular mauka clouds formed and began to obscure the mountain and the fire from view.
These videos I have been doing make it obvious why cameras have tripod connections and why you see cameramen doing film work on railroad like tracks and a person behind them helping to keep them still. How far I will go in this matter is yet to be seen.
The winds have switched to the opposite direction and we now have stronger Kona winds in front of an approaching cold front. This front could bring rain which would sure help. Yesterday on the radio I heard some spokesperson saying Kona winds could be a good thing because the fire would turn back on itself and re-burn what had already burned.
Last night the fire seemed almost done. There was very little flame to see on the mountain in the dark. By this morning it had gained strength and smoke was billowing off the mountain again.
The video is not very good in the sense of clarity, but it will give you an idea of the elevation the fire is burning at and the large area it has spread over. It is burning at both ends of the Polipoli forest now, the entire distance of the pan of the camera over the face of Haleakala.
I wonder if this fire may force the state and county to get serious about the large herds of Axis deer that roam freely all over Haleakala. The fire is spread over such a large area it must be sending the deer fleeing in all directions making it a lot harder to ignore them.
Your on the spot reporter Christopher C. in Hawaii checking in with the latest update on the Polipoli forest reserve fire.
The one good thing about this fire is that I have discovered the digital zoom on my camera is actually quite good with only a minor loss of clarity.
This is Haleakala at noon moving from NE to SW.
Since we have only had one significant winter rain I would imagine the forest is relatively dry. This may prove an opportunity down the road to replant native trees. This forest was planted I am guessing between a 1920 to 1940 time frame.
So far we are lucky in Kihei that the smoke is going over us and not settling in town. The fire is still burning on this very steep and mostly roadless mountain forest preserve.
The sunrise added color to the smoke, an orange and yellow glow.
From experience with cane fires and their smoke I know that once the sun rises above Haleakala an eerie orange glow can be cast over Kihei. The surrounding air will appear orange and we will be enveloped in a strange sensation.
You would never know some times from my land centered garden blog that I live on an island surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean on the most remote archipelago on the planet.
Here is the the face of Maui more often promoted.
