I Think I've Got It!

Dehydrating the tangerines, not COVID-19. I prepared 8 more tangerines today for dehydrating. I started out with 11 but one had maggots and the other 2 were so overripe my thumb went through them when I was trying to peel them, even with the easy-peel skins! I discovered a couple of things. Overripe tangerines, even just slightly overripe ones, are difficult to cut in half; the properly ripe ones are easy. They are the same consistency as a raw shrimp and butterfly nicely like a raw shrimp! The split slices from 4 tangerines fits on each tray in 7 rows of 12 pieces or 84 tangerine "chips" per tray. Guess how many slices there are in the average tangerine? Well, in the average tangerine growing at this house? Answer in tomorrow's blog!

The beginning of the process; I will be drying the skins also for use in cooking.

The slices in the top 2 rows were slightly overripe.

Sunrise this morning was nice and dry; most of the mornings it has been accompanied by some precipitation, usually a very light drizzle. Most nights there is rain here at this time of the year so it is very green here. But it does not rain here as much as it does in Hilo!

Thirty-two minutes before sunrise.

I texted cousin Laurel this morning to let her know I was here, but that I wasn't going to be visiting anyone due to the social distancing. She had somber news; Uncle Kazu was put in to hospice care yesterday. Because he is diabetic his circulation is compromised; when he gets open sores they do not heal quickly. She said he has had sores on his good leg for a couple of weeks and just recently banged his other leg at the site of the amputation & the scar has partially opened up. With hospice care he will have an additional hospice nurse looking in on him more frequently and also have access to more powerful pain medications for the neuropathy caused by the diabetes.

I took photos of some of the fence repairs that Grey did yesterday. He did a very good job; those pigs did not get in last night! Their only way in now is to crawl under the fence, it will exclude all except the smaller pigs. And those might be too young to feel comfortable being away from mom pig.

Grey's patch job is on the other side of the white plastic material that I temporarily put up to block the pigs.

He built a whole new panel between the fence posts in this section since it was so bad.

This patch was just at the bottom where they were getting under the fence.

He drove a stake in then nailed it to the pallet to keep the pigs from pushing it aside.

I walked around th north side of the house, checking for any signs of pig damage but found none. I did, however, find an iris in bloom! I really love irises and was sad to learn that there are not many types that can grow in the hotter temperatures here. My grandmother, however, found one. It is near the northwest corner of the house in the shade. This is the 2nd time I have seen a blossom on this plant. It has set seed before; I shall have to collect some and see if I can get them to sprout.

I think it might be a type of Siberian iris.

I saw Mom Cat again this afternoon; she was lying in the grass in the shade in Jessie's back yard. I poured food in to the dish and tried to do it loudly; it did not get a response from her. But later in the afternoon I checked and someone had been by to eat some of the food. I checked later and it looked like some birds had also been there; there was food scattered on the porch like it would be if chickens were pecking at food in the bowl.


When I took a break this afternoon, I got on Instagram to see what others might be posting while following the stay-at-home order. Tomiko is working on scanning her cyanotypes, while her cat Cub helps out. And there was a Manu-o-Ku sighting at the Hawai'i Wildlife Center yesterday!

Cub helps Tomiko with her cyanotypes.

Look familiar?

I'm standing just out of the photo to the right.

I started shelling the macadamia nuts that I had collected this past summer. I am going to dry them in the dehydrator tomorrow after the tangerines are done and send them across the Pacific with Grey and his crew. At least for the early part of their voyage they will have some tasty items! I couldn't quite remember what we used to do when we harvested them before; I had to look it up and found our I should have done some things differently. Aue! Consequently I was only able to remove the husks from about half the nuts; Grey said he would get the rest of them off tomorrow.

Getting ready to start shelling.

I had to remove the husks 1st; apparently I should have done that shortly after I collected them.

They crack easier if you line the suture up with the direction of the force of the nutcracker.

The nuts tend to come out whole more often if you do it right.

The results from the 1st batch.

This is from about 100 nuts; more to come tomorrow.

I could not remember what Grandma & Grandpa did when harvesting the macadamia nuts except for just picking them up from the ground. (I found a tool on-line that is supposed to help with that, the Garden Weasel Large Nut Gatherer.) But Google is my friend! I discovered removing the husks when they are green is easiest. Then you should dry them for 2 to 3 weeks before shelling.

We are now up to 285 case with 27 new ones; a 9.5% increase over yesterday. Yesterday there was a 13.2% increase over the previous day and on Tuesday there was an 8.9% increase. There was 1 new death for a total of 2 deaths; 72 people (25.3%) have been released from isolation. The epidemiological curve is not showing any spike but its also too early to tell if it is showing any flattening of the curve. The presentation of the Epi Curve is similar to what they did  showed during the  dengue fever outbreak in 2015.