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!

This old house

Unfortunately Curt and Linda are not sitting on the beach cruising as you may have thought we were doing. "This Old House" needed more work than anticipated.  More nooks and crannies with black mold - behind the stove and in the ceiling.  We removed and replaced two ceilings last weekend.  What a mess.  Haven't felt that dirty since a ten day backpacking trip.  We find little surprises where termites have snacked away the wood trim; leaving a pile of wood sand that pours out of the crevices like an hour glass.
Thank goodness we picked up a shop vac to assist in our renovations.  Linda has painted the yellow kitchen cabinets brown and taken down the faded moldy drapes. 

The steers are happy in the pasture and we are ridding it of fire weed.  We enjoyed a fabulous rainbow yesterday as we were pulling weeds.  Linda is happy as her papaya seeds are beginning to spout and she potted another armful of orchid keiki's (babies) this week. We are hiring some young men from Job Corps to dig the garden on Sunday. 

War against Black Mold Continues

Linda has never been a great housekeeper - that is changing with the war against black mold - she is washing walls, scrubbing wood floors on her knees, scouring ceilings and painting.  This old house was barely lived in for 20 years and we have found it needs a thorough cleaning.  Linda's cough and wheezing is better with every wash down of a room.   Next we tear out the old ceiling and replace with drywall - that will hopefully be the end of the hidden dearth. 

Along the lines of housework - we have no dishwasher - remember those days?   And electricity is three times the price of mainland electricity so the clothes go outside to dry.  They seem to cure in the sun with the gentle breeze and infused with freshness - makes me wonder why I stopped using the sun to dry my clothes. 

Along the lines of going green - Maui banned plastic bags at the stores.  We have bought reusable bags and after one month on the island we are almost trained to remember to bring them to the store.  We are wondering what we will do with the cat poo without those great plastic bags. We are looking into compostable cat litter. 

We chose to go no network TV again.  We kept busy enough in Boulder to only watch movies and that seems to be the case again.  We signed up for streaming Netflix - good idea but the steam is a long ways to Maui and movies stop annoyingly often.  Linda is making the effort to read her current book everyday - something she promised to pencil into her retirement years.  We designated Sunday as Beach Day so not to be too absorbed in the work on the farm.  Maui's beaches are truly stunning and pictures will be coming soon.