More Gardening Work Done

I did the afternoon/evening shift today; I usually do it on Thursdays so that I have one day dedicated to running errands & doing chores around the house. Today I started out by finishing off the Mickey Mouse plant that I started last week; as in cutting it down & getting rid of it. They grow rapidly & block the view of oncoming traffic making backing out hazardous. Then I started on the mock orange; I am trying to train it to a single trunk so it is like a tree; I already have a Mickey Mouse plant being trained to a tree form so I am removing all the rest of them. I also started removing more branches from the yellow and red 'ohai ali'i to train them in to tree forms, too.

Results after Sunday pruning.

Results after today's pruning; much better sight distance!

While I was pruning the bushes I heard a bunch of Rose-ringed Parakeets making a lot of noise. I looked up to see them mobbing a trio of low-flying 'Iwa. I have never seen 'Iwa being mobbed, especially not by Rose-ringed Parakeets!

Na 'Iwa (Fregata sp., I can't tell which species they are from a distance).

Since I was doing the afternoon/evening shift I only did one walk. And I saw the Kolea today! It was foraging in the forested area of the park. I'm not sure if this is a bird returning early from the breeding grounds in Alaska or if its one of the ones that I saw earlier that never left. (I forgot to charge my phone, so I was unable to get a photo of this Kolea.)

I was going to join the Zumba class at Maunalani today. But I started out napping for the first 15 minutes or so. Dad woke me up yelling for water; he was rather demanding about water (3 requests, all needing to be with ice), cold juice, covers off, covers on, etc., during the 1st half of the class so I decided to skip it. Perhaps Mondays will be a better time since Curtis will be here to cater to Dad's needs.

Two of the RNs today commented on how they could see that I had lost weight since Dad has arrived here in mid-April. I know I lost 10 pounds since I started with the Fitbit in late December. I checked and found since mid-April I have lost 7 pounds; so the majority of my weight loss has been since Dad arrived at Maunalani. I think it's not only the loss of weight, it is also the toning of muscle that people are seeing. When I was training in Aikido 5 or 6 days a week, I was at 90 pounds. If I went up to 95 I felt sluggish, if I went down to 85 I felt weak. Right now I am at 115 pounds and my current target weight is 100 pounds; if I'm still feeling sluggish when I get there, I'll keep on going down till I find the weight that makes me feel healthy & strong again. If I find that healthy point before I get down to 100 pounds, I'll stop there.

This evening I walked to the freeway & back with The Roommate Who Likes to Wash Dishes. Right now I think I will do this approximately 1 mile night time walk when I am unable to do 3 walks at Maunalani. The morning walk leaving from the upper parking lot & going to the park is about 0.8 miles; with Maunalani Circle it is about 1.2 miles. Each of the later walks leaving from the lower parking lot is about 0.6 miles. So my 3 walks gives me about 2.4 miles, adding the night time walk makes it 3.4 miles. If I change the combination of where I walk each week I can slowly increase the amount of walking I do each day.

I finished listening to the Harry Dresden audiobook Grave Peril this morning while balancing some of the checkbooks (there are 6 accounts). I have now started on Summer Knight. So far, each of the novels tends to focus on a particular group of magical being, although there are other beings as well. The antagonist in Storm Front was a sorcerer, in Fool Moon it was werewolves, and in Grave Peril it was vampires. In the short stories, the antagonist in Restoration of Faith was a troll. Working for Bigfoot was slightly different, the antagonist was middle school bullies and Harry's client was Bigfoot. In Summer Knight the focus is on fairies.

Happy Birthday to Susie & Heavy!