(Flashback) I met Tim Curry and a couple of his friends in a garden on Maui I tended. I pretended I did not know who he was. From the Rocky Horror Picture Show, "I'm Going Home."

On the day I went away

Goodbye

Was all I had to say

I want to come again and stay

Oh my my

Smile and that will mean I may

Cause I've seen blue skies, through the tears

In my eyes

And I realise....I'm going home.

Everywhere it's been the same

Feeling

Like I am outside in the rain

Wheeling

Free to find a game

Dealing

Cards for sorrow, cards for pain

Cause I've seen blue skies, through the tears

In my eyes

And I realise... I'm going home

I'm going home.

Aloha Maui No Ka Oi

Aloha Tropical Embellishments

To a North Carolina mountain top

You will find me there Outside Clyde

Life Moves on a Long

If you were hoping for some great final essay from Maui you will be disappointed. I had planned to write something. I wanted to. The art of procrastination is reserving it for a cold snowy day when I am trapped indoors and can reminisce. From a distance things will always be blue and green.

Progress continues to happen. My slice of the sky has always been cropped to remove the less attractive features. I zoomed you in through the middle. The real thing had two big Plumeria trees in the way on the left hand side.













After sixteen years in this house, five days before I move, the Plumerias were cut to the ground and the stumps removed, my view just got bigger. My neighbor below is putting up a wall. They make for even better neighbors than regular fences.















On the same day another two lives were extinguished. They wait under the eaves of the house instead of in the yard because of a passing shower.















Aloha Greyman and Darkie. You were very fine companions.










































Some things are ephemeral and they change with time. New replaces the old.















Some things may look like they have the capacity to be eternal.



















Some things for all intents and purposes are eternal.


















Aloha from Maui.

Last Minute Impulse

Half-breed Samoan

The picture is straight.
I have always leaned slightly askew.

Early This Morning

Before I loaded the truck with plants to take down to the nursery in town, drove to the other side to look inside my air freight Big Box and see the actual interior dimensions and to buy real boxes and cardboard to pack my paintings, instead of dumpster diving for boxes, I looked out the window and the delicate flower of the Variegated Shell Ginger smiled back at me.

















The flowers are quite nice, but short lived for a ginger. This plant is grown more for its green and yellow bold striped foliage.



















Once I was outside with the camera in hand I took a morning stroll. The calathea insignis is in full full bloom. This is the small plant of the two in the garden.















The Zephyranthes grandiflora seems much less dependent on rain and blooms intermittently while it waits for rain to put on a really big show.















I know there are many more Daylilies in my future.




















A large drift of the tetraploids sits at the entrance to my future driveway and needs to be saved before or when the bulldozers arrive. My mother can't bear the thought of their demise despite the fact that they have millions more. I will not be surprised if they are waiting for me, safely off to one side and needing to be tucked back into the ground, if only in a temporary home.

Papaya Skies

It was another moist like day with the sky contemplating rain and offering up only minor sprinkles. I was inside most of the time packing my life into a corner. A test space for my big box that is being sent air freight. Everything must fit in a 48 inch by 40 inch by 58 inch tall, rigid shipping box.

I would guess this Papaya is about 25 feet tall. It will not fit in the Big Box.

The top of the Heiau/Pyramid. This is much bigger than the Big Box and significantly over the vague 500 pound weight limit I may have heard mentioned.

Heliconia imprisoned. This is one of the Big Boys, Heliconia jacquinii with the flowers six to eight feet in the air. The plant tops out at about eighteen feet.
















Closer to earth is the yellow form of the Caesalpinia pulcherrima. Left to assume their natural shape they will make nice small trees.
















A cute native Hawaiian Hibiscus, Hibiscus kokio or Koki'o 'ula'ula. I like how the sepals form a distinct cup at the base from which the petals emerge.

















Another day is done.




















In the land of Papaya Skies.

Tropical Porn

Heliconia bihai in the flesh, raw and unedited.
















Apparently there may be some genre of porn of which I am not aware. When I did the post on Ms. Derviss' new blog Garden Porn, I kept getting hits to my blog from the search words Tropical Porn.

This post should keep the blog active while I drive cross country.

Inside Outside

A new policy has been instituted. If it goes outside to get sold, it is not allowed back inside. The result is the house is pretty much emptied and actual packing has commenced. The carport is surprisingly tidy considering how much stuff it now contains.
















I rarely dropped the blinds in the bedroom unless I was trying to take a late afternoon nap. Who would want to hide This View from My Window.
















I know you can't really tell from this picture, but we are having an afternoon mauka shower. It is raining and it has rained quite nicely thank you.

















The process of designing and building my cozy little cottage in North Carolina has already begun. By the time I get there a gravel road/driveway will be in and the pad for the future house and cabin will be cleared.

I am going to have to make all kinds of decisions about what my new house will feel like. I have never done this before. Green paint I can pick. Now we are talking every little detail. I'll think about it more on the drive over.
















This nice little down pour could mean a special treat before I go. The thousands of potted Zephyr Lily bulbs that I still have, Lord help me, could bloom en masse.

The computer and Tropical Embellishments is being unplugged Wednesday night however. Will the Zephyr Lilies bloom in time?
















The jungle outside my window takes on a new presence when the walls are bare and the room is stripped clean except for the boxes on the floor.













See it really did rain. Manila Palms channel the rain water right down their trunks. When it rains hard, there is a river of water running down the palm. Brilliant survival strategy don't you think?
















Will the Zephyr Lilies bloom in time for the last image from Maui?
Stay tuned.

Back to packing.

Good to the Last Flower

Another long day has ended. More stuff and more plants have left the premises.

The Buttercup Tree keeps on keeping on. It is spitting out flowers on some of the water sprout branches forming on its beheaded major limbs. Such radical pruning of trees generally causes the opposite of the intended effect and makes the tree grow taller much faster. It's next pruning may be even more radical, like to the ground.














My patch of the Blue Louisiana Iris is putting on its first flowers. Some plant shoppers spotted them before me and it helped spur the sale of quite a few of them.
















The Torch Ginger didn't even seem to take a rest this past winter and now are blooming up a storm as I dig up starts to sell from around the edge of the patch. The common light blue Agapanthus have a few early blooms next door. I want to dig these up too before I go.

















The strange gardener in paradise, me, growing Juniperus procumbens. To most people it is so not the image of tropical Hawaii. People would actually recoil when seeing it and dismiss it with disdain. When they would give you the list of requirements they want in a groundcover, short, low water, full sun, no maintenance, year round interest, keeps out weeds and of course, that would bloom 365 days a year, except for the flowers, this Juniper fit all the other criteria. Sadly for many people every plant in the garden must have a bloom. The idea of placing another blooming type of plant next to this as a groudcover would not compute. This Juniper was not tropical. It did not fulfill the fantasy.

Its much more common use in Hawaii is as a fake Bonsai.

















Some of my plants look much better in the neighbors yard. The White Shrimp plant mixes with A'ali'i, Dodonaea viscosa. I collected both of these as cuttings and seed respectively in the wild during my explorations on Maui. One is now a desired native plant and the other is a very pretty slightly invasive weed.




















I think it is safe to say my neighbors were never bored when they looked into my garden.