What to do on Christmas

The Christmas season in Hawaii is not the mainland.  We are dreaming of a wet Christmas and had six inches of rain the past ten days.  We have green, green, green and red mud.  Surprisingly, the weather cools off in Haiku where we live.  With 100% humidity and 58 degree temperatures in the early am, we are closing windows, throwing on long sleeved shirts, socks and flannel jackets.  We hope for a break in the rain during the day to get some "farming" done.  One day we just went out and worked in the rain; it was muddy; yet fun.  Every day is full of rainbows and our homestead seems to sit directly under a rainbow most days.  We went to the Grand Wailea for Christmas lunch and we mingled amongst the rich and famous for an almost affordable lunch, $25.00 valet parking and a very nice beach. The landscaping was fabulous - inspiring Linda to get the red ginger planted and work on creating our jungle paradise.  Christmas Eve day we volunteered at the free dinner at Baldwin Beach.  Lots of aloha and generosity for all.  The story is that locals, haoles and homeless people all come together in the spirit of Christmas.  We like that.  The food was ONO - the best.  72 turkeys were cooked in an imu local style and it was to die for.  Baldwin beach is just fabulous and we felt blessed to be a part of the Maui ohana. Christmas evening dinner was getting together with new friends for prime rib dinner and fresh salad 100% from the garden, including organic avocado dressing.  Linda created a Christmas centerpiece with flowers from the yard - so much fun!

Happy Holidays and Mele Kalikimaka!

We be blogging again!  Sorry for the down time. Got busy moving cats and dog to Maui and a number of other lame excuses that will be left to speculation.

Maui Hale Mauka has a face lift!  Curt completed the cat dormitory, with louvered windows so the cats get the wonderful trade winds without a chance of escape.  Tigger and Jax were introduced to each other and there was lots of howling going on for a few weeks.  They seem to have come to terms now.  Kalani and Gracie have had the first litters and there are some happy soon to be Maine Coon owners in Hawaii.  There has not been a Maine Coon breeder in Hawaii for many years and there is a great deal of enthusiasm with the breed coming to the island. 

The organic garden has met with success and failure. The squash all were destroyed by squash vine borers.
Curt consulted with the extension office here on Maui and we have a plan for the next planting.  The cherry tomatoes do well, as long as you pick them before they are super ripe.  The larger tomatoes were destroyed by fruit flies.  Curt attended a fruit fly class and set up several traps in the yard.  Lettuce, kale, peas, radish Swiss chard, egg plant and hot peppers did very well.  Linda has transplanted about fifty papaya trees that she started from seeds and the passion fruit starts are bountiful.  The first papaya trees we planted have fingertip sized fruit already.  Curt has hired an excavator to clear a piece of land for garden #2.   We still have producing avocado trees and the four tangerine trees are starting to ripen. 

The steers were moved to the back pasture and they are almost friendly now and will eat fruit out of our hands. 

When life hands you lemons; make lemonade!

The orchids are just fabulous and so easy to care for.  Linda has planted pikake and tuberose - the yummy white fragrant flowers that go in leis.  She recently got a handful of hibiscus in different colors to start.  Her plans are to create a hibiscus garden with every variety on the island. 

Big project day was replacing the ceiling in the kitchen and living room - lots of mold and rat droppings - yuck!

Many thanks to Curt and Michael who finished the kitchen. Nothing like moving the kitchen set up to the bedroom and sink outside for a week.  Amazing what a difference it is to have enough storage and a work area.  As suspected the area behind the screaming yellow cabinets was full of black mold - all gone now; yippee!!

Curt and Michael secured a fence around the yard to keep the dogs away from the road. Olivia is Goliath's new buddy - a totally sweet Pit Bull puppy.  They romp and play like kids at the park.  We also have a new toilet in the laundry room (I know weird, but in Hawaii they put toilets in laundry rooms).

Linda acquired a used piano and found her old Bernina sewing machine on EBay - it works great.
She hopes to start sewing again soon - starting with window treatments.  She is collecting orchids, ginger and antheriums for her "some day" plant nursery.

Linda is working now doing telepsychiatry and has to regulate the cat company in the room. 
Despite some annoying technical difficulties at times, she enjoys her new job.  Curt is writing software and moved his office to the bedroom.  It is great working from home!

We keep hearing how cold it is on the mainland to ya'all better make plans to come to Hawaii!

We be farmers

We have expanded our farm with the additional of one giant coffee tree and 175 keiki's (baby trees)  Fortunately we had the help of our new wwoofers - Michael and Heather.  They have joined us in creating this new life on Maui. They are hard workers and a delightful young couple. 

 http://www.wwoof.org/

We planted a fig tree, lemon, lime, bay leaf, koa and palms.  The garden is up and we have flowers on the tomatoes already.  We have harvested ~400 avocados and some local boys picked a couple hundred more.Linda's orchid collection is expanding and she has too many papaya, macadamia and lillikoi starts. 

The cat dormitory is nearly done and we will be returning to Colorado for our first round of pets.  Many thanks to friends and family that have put up with the critters for two months.  We are looking forward to not having so much manual labor for awhile!

A year after the fire

I was keeping a personal blog during the months after the fire.  I would like to share that now with some pictures in tribute to Hale Mauka I - our beloved Mountain House outside of Boulder, Colorado that burned to the ground one year ago.

My fire story

Trying to explain what it is like to have your house burn down is similar to childbirth – you just do not understand until you experience it.  I think it would have been easier if we had the opportunity to save some stuff.  As is was, we were on a cruise the South Pacific and learned about the fire via email.  The first day we thought – oh, Emerson Gulch is far away – we don’t have to worry.  The next day we got a picture of our house engulfed in flames.  We were a featured house burning down on Channel Nine news.  Not a claim to fame that I wanted to have. 

We had a pet/house sitter – who gallantly saved 10 of 11 cats (we breed Maine Coon Cats). The dog was at a friend's house.  Sweet Jessie grabbed her computer and left in a panic – lots of smoke and confusion. She and everyone else in our neighborhood never believed that the house would burn down; but it did.   We lost everything else – photos, family treasures, antiques and stuff.  So much was unneeded and can be replaced.  Some things are irreplaceable.  I miss the pictures my great grandmother made out of buttons – one was a flag with 48 stars; the other was a bouquet of flowers.   Same great grandmother made handmade quilts – I had six total – all in like new condition as the tops were quilted but never made – I had one quilted by a church group and put up on display.  There were several antiques also – the carved old man chair made of oak – from my Dad’s grandfather – I cannot even find something similar to add to the insurance “list”.   I was an avid collector of glassware and porcelain – it must have come from my childhood days of running through my grandparent’s housewares store in Greeley, Colorado.  They stocked china, figurines and vases – Lefton, Heirlooms of Tomorrow and Hummel’s. I had a passion for this stuff and collected like crazy.  My great grandparents had a salt and pepper collection which was my favorite.  I loved them and had china cabinets full of salt and pepper shakers – over a thousand.  I was an EBay addict.

If there is one piece of advise that I would say to everyone - save a copy of your pictures on the Internet or make several copies to give to family for safe keeping.  Losing 40+ years of all photographs, movies and cherished memories is the greatest loss of all. 

When we went to the house after the fire, all my treasures sat in a pile of rubble – dang. I was too sad to even be mad.  What a loss that was.

Now I have an aversion to stuff – I don’t want to collect art or china or crystal or buttons.  Part of me says – no reason to have or collect anything.  I realize that this is my F-IT response to having lost so many things that I loved and adored.  I can use the excuse of living a simple and uncluttered life – when the truth is – I collected because I loved these things, and they are gone and I have to move on.

I had a penchant for Indian jewelry – It began in my childhood when my parents took me to Estes Park and they bought my first turquoise bracelet. In college in the 1970’s, my college boyfriend made beaded leather purses and we drove to the Navajo reservations and traded for pawn jewelry.  I also was enticed by my Grandmother Helen’s squash blossom – which I gratefully inherited – what a treasure that was. I took one piece of turquoise on the cruise – which I still have.  My sister kindly gave me a strand of turquoise also – which is safely hidden in my house. 

I have this fear of loss – I don’t want to have anything of value in my house because I am afraid that it will go away.  I don’t want to own jewelry because it may be gone. 

A simple life has value – we have moved into a small condo which is really easy because we don’t have any stuff anymore.  We have agreed to not buy movies, or books or plants or DVDs.  Although I did replace my Spanish DVD’s and our favorite Indian Cook books.  I can do without china and crystal – although I truly loved them.  We have the essentials and that is okay. 

Stress

I did not expect to have a dirge of depression with the loss of our home.  Curt and I both went through the blues – anger and sadness, emptiness and uncertainty.  There were a few times we were at each other’s throats.   The loss of our home was a loss of who we are and what we do.  We lived at Hale Mauka - mountain house for ten years.  In that time we built a two story garage, new Trex deck, new roof, new greenhouse, remodeled kitchen and three bathrooms and Curt built an electric car, installed a solar heat and hot water system and had photovoltaic panels installed.  We built an incredible garden – hours of clearing land, terracing garden plots, building a pond and deer fence and creating stone walkways. We harvested several years of Hale Mauka honey from our hives.  Grapes, apples, cherries, peaches, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes, hops, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, squash, onions, asparagus, peppers, many herbs and spices, horseradish and more than I can remember.  The flowers (Linda’s passion) – daffodils, tulips, roses, lilies, Clematis, incredible columbine – and the iris – Linda loves her iris and had hundreds – each June was a celebration of the blooming iris.  And the peonies – what a joy.  They survived the fire – dang hearty those plants are. We would scatter wildflowers and the beautiful meadows would appear.  Curt’s drip irrigation kept everything going……many thanks.

We walk the graveside of our home and the hearty bulbs shoot their green fronds boldly followed by a burst of golden yellow or fire engine red.  Amazing when we remember the wood stove that melted in the fire and the glass that melted and entombed a figurine.   What magic allows the beauty of an iris to shield itself from a fury of a fire if just buried below the surface of the inferno?  The teak bench and plastic yard chair – just a few feet away from the house – sat untouched.

The koi survived – yeah, the FISH live.  We had Goldie for perhaps seven years – she was about 15 inches.  She and her babies went to Pet Smart in Superior.  My lovely daughter appealed for help and found them a new home.  That pond sits now empty – awaiting a new land owner who does not have angst about the land that we nurtured and loved.  An owner ready to recreate that dream on a hill outside of the Republic of Boulder.

The Fire Department

It was ironic that Curt and I were cruising the South Pacific when our house burned down – we were members of the Four Mile Fire Department and we would have been fighting the fire ourselves.  Several fire fighters lost their homes – including Cash who lived on the top of Arroyo Chico.  Only one family decided to rebuild after the fire on our road.  After the fire we had many of the burned trees cut down.  Linda harvested most of the iris, roses and peonies and distributed them to friends and family.  When we go back to the land we want to clean everything up – wanting to recreate the land that we loved.  We decided to move to Maui rather than re-build – a dream of ours for many years.  Arroyo Chico and Four Mile canyon will always remain in our hearts as a place of love and creation of our dream home.  That dream continues as we start over with a new homestead on Maui. 

Flowers

Our new friends Richard and Maurice came over last night and brought the most beautiful large fragrant roses from Kula.  Linda's Tillandsia "Pink Quill" surprised us with dainty purple flowers.

Life is just a moment

Our roommate's adorable Bella passed on to doggie heaven this week.  Our hearts are broken.  We will miss her so much. 

The first vegetable garden and cat dormitory

In brief - our recent projects - first two vegetable gardens are dug, the base of the cat dormitory is built, the house trim is partially painted, we have hot water solar installed, a third ceiling is replaced and nearly done and Curt installed a gas stove (Linda will miss the ~1948 electric stove that came with the house.

We need a trip back to Colorado so we are not working so hard!