My Summer Vacation: Obon

The big event for today was Obon. We went to the 5 pm service where the priest walks through the cemetery, blessing all the souls there; over the years less people would follow the priest since the terrain is very uneven. This year there were 5 of us. Tomiko & Kai went to pick Uncle Kazu up after the church service, while I stayed with Aunty Florence. It turned out Uncle Kazu had physical therapy today & his leg was hurting too much, he decided to skip the Obon for this year. We got barbecued meat skewers, Spam musubi, Korean fried chicken, and manju to eat while we watched the festivities.

Sensei says a prayer to start the service; we will walk through the cemetery in the background.

Aunty Florence watches Sensei bless the banners.

Obon food!

Last night while I was at the Hawaiʻi Wildlife Center, I sent a short e-mail to Cindy & Jim; I met them in May during the Manu-o-Ku Festival in Honolulu. They actually live in Waimea. Cindy said Jim would be at Obon; it turns out he goes to many of them on the island and enjoys dancing!

Jim & Tomiko dancing. (Photo by Aunty Florence)

After the bon odori is the osettai meal. It is mainly prepared by the fujinkai ladies, but people also donate food for the meal. I ended up skipping osettai because I am still fighting off a sore throat & sniffles. Suzanne sent me a photo of Kaleo & Kawaiola at their local Obon; they said ours was more fun!

Much of what we do during Obon has remained the same as I remember it from when I was a child, but some things have changed. Like Ellen getting a Smart phone; she's just learning how to send photos to people. Or the memorial banners for departed loved ones; Joy started that a few years ago and does much of the work on preparing the beautiful banners. They also honor locals who were killed in armed conflicts. And now there is a gender neutral bathroom!

Tomiko helps Ellen figure out her new phone, while Aunty Florence looks on.

Memorial banners.

Honoring fallen veterans.

I skipped the sunrise birding walk again. Instead I lay in bed and dozed, waking occasionally to take a photo of the ironwoods in the changing light.

At 5:50.

At 6:25.

At 6:47. Time to get out of bed!

When I did get up I worked on setting up the area where I will keep the plants that I am starting; they will be along the north side of the garage. Aunty Florence helped me stomp down the weeds and lay down 2 widths of weed barrier cloth along the first 10 feet or so. While doing this we found 2 very small hāpuʻu.

Before.

Ready for work.

Baby hāpuʻu.

Weed cloth installed, getting ready to set up the irrigation line.

Then I got out the drip irrigation kit to start setting it up before I dug up the other baby hāpuʻu. I'm glad I did it in that order. I discovered that the kit that I had purchased new from Lowe's in Honolulu was incomplete. It looked like someone bought it, opened up the coil of irrigation line and took the adapter that connects the irrigation line to the timer and some other pieces, then returned it to Lowe's; whoever put it back out on the shelf did not notice that key parts were missing. I am very annoyed that someone would do something like that.

Not one to dwell on spilled milk, I shifted gears. I started working on removing the shoots from the invasive tree trunks that were cut down a couple years ago. Aikane Nursery has not been as aggressive as I would like them to be about getting rid of the invasives; they rather pull weeds. So I did a cut stump application of concentrated Roundup weed killer; it is a technique we would use against blackberry bushes in our mitigation sites. Like the name says, cut the shoot, then paint it with full strength concentrated Roundup. Make sure you are wearing gloves and you mark the paintbrush as the Roundup applicator. I did an experiment also. On the last plant I just cut the shoots, I did not apply Roundup; we'll see how much growth there is on the next visit.

I did a cut stump application on this invasive; I forgot to get a before photo.

This is the before photo of the one that I did not treat.

On my next trip I will compare their growth.

I also watched Tomiko make some cyanotype prints; she currently teaches about the process in her photography class at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She set out the cyanotype paper using various plant materials to make the images, then washed them in the kitchen sink or out on the lawn; she has also experimented with washing them in the ocean. There is the textbook standard way to do it, then there is the let's-experiment-and-see-what-it-looks-like way.