My Summer Vacation: Anthurium Bed Replenished

Greg and most of the Aikane crew arrived about 8:30 this morning; Josh was here about 15 minutes earlier. Josh had the chipped kiawe mulch that was going in to the anthurium beds. He helped me remove the last patch of mondo grass from the path; he used a pick axe and took care of it in about 10 minutes! With that out of the area it made access easier for them to move the mulch.

Josh uses a pick ax to dig the roots of the mondo grass in path.

Pau for now!

While I was digging out the mondo grass I discovered that the toe of my right shoe was starting to delaminate. I had been wondering why I kept tripping over the rocks or bricks forming the raised edges of the anthurium beds; I thought I was raising my toe high enough to get over it. And I was, the shoe just wasn't keeping up with my foot! Aue! Well, this is one of my old pairs of Hoka One Ones that I had worn out the tread for walking so it was relegated to gardening use. It replaced my old shoes that delaminated while I was with Mary Ellen & Michael when they visited in July 2017 & we were walking through lava fields! I think I have another old pair of Hoka One Ones that I can bring over on the next trip. When I was walking 4.5 miles a day I would wear out a pair in 3 months, so there are several lying around for other uses.

Whatʻs wrong with my toe?

This time it is on the front of the shoe.

The Aikane crew first worked on getting the weeds out of the beds. While they did that I first dug up the edible ginger and 3 starts of blue ginger. Then I cut the rest of the blue ginger in both beds down and tossed it out of the beds; I will have to keep cutting them in order to starve out the tubers. Once the weeds were out of the beds the mulch spreading went quickly; they were done in about an hour. It is now looking much more like Grandma's anthurium garden. Except there are few anthuriums; before I leave I will be replanting the ones I removed from around the hāpuʻu that had to be moved yesterday. I also have to get the rest of the mondo grass in to flats & under the misters so they can survive while I am gone.

Aikane crew removing weeds from the anthurium beds.

Looking at Bed #1 from the northeast corner before mulch.

After mulch has been spread.

Looking at Bed #2 from the northwest.

After mulch has been spread.

They weeded the area to the east of the easterly anthurium bed, around the red ginger and persimmon; a task that I was going to try to get to before I left. Now all I have to do is lay down the weed cloth and weight it down to let it do its job killing weeds. Yay! Then I will have to figure out what to do there next.

They also weeded around the kalo east of the croton hedge; there are 3 plants there. I will have to find out more about growing upland kalo and figure out where would be the best place to create a loʻi for them. For now I think I should put some weed cloth around them and put down some mulch to keep the weeds somewhat under control. I suspect the pipe that is near them is water from the washer; I will have to check on that tomorrow when I do laundry.

Upland kalo.

Greg finally pruned out the 2 watersprouts on the avocado; nutrients can now go to the rest of the plant. He also removed sprouts from an old citrus stump; I will have to keep an eye on that and keep it trimmed down to starve it out. I also asked him to have the banana that fruited removed and discourage keiki on the fence side of the clump, while encouraging them on the lawn side since most of the clump is actually not on this property. Aue!

When the Saffron Finch first woke me up this morning I was wondering whether they would be working today; it was raining quite steadily. But by the time my alarm went off it had stopped raining. While I was having my morning tea, the weather improved steadily and was pleasant by the time the Aikane crew started to arrive.

Birdrise at twenty-five minutes to sunrise.

Awake at seventeen minutes after sunrise.

After Aikane left I finished putting in the rest of the irrigation for the holding area. I also ran one sprinkler head to the mondo grass where I will be removing weeds and replacing them with more mondo grass. I like the mondo grass because it usually gets so thick weeds can't get a hold in it. And if they do they are fairly easily removed. It's also low enough when I need to treat the house again for termites it will be no problem.

I went to the cemetery before lunch; I took the blue ginger I had cut yesterday and this morning. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the alstroemerias were doing really well! Apparently they can last for up to 14 days as cut flowers without drying up. The roses did their thing and died and dried up; probably the day after we left them. And the statice also did its thing, drying up and still looking alive.

The bouquet of flowers we left last Tuesday.

This is Uncle Kazuʻs parentsʻ grave.

Uncle Kazuʻs urn is on the top shelf, above the white vase.

On the way back, I stopped at Minnie's to get lunch; probably my last lunch from there for this trip. After lunch Martina checked out the slices of fruit I had put out; she didn't stay long. I think I let the fruit sit out too long and it was dry. I replaced the slices after she left; I trimmed the skin off the mountain apple to make it juicier and put a larger piece of guava including the pulpy sac around the seeds. But I haven't seen her come back since then.

I went to check how the potted hāpuʻu and other plants were doing in the holding area; I want to make sure they are getting enough moisture throughout the day to survive while I am gone. I will keep an eye on them over the next day or so but I am leaning towards increasing it to 15 minutes of watering every hour; it's at 10 minutes every hour right now.

As I was heading back to the house, I looked over and something was odd about the popcorn orchid, so I went over to check. It was turned on its side and the blossoms were turned into the grass and rocks; that's what looked odd about it since I had arranged it so the flowers would hang freely above the substrate. When I turned the pot over I found it had been cracked! This is the pot I bought on Friday! It was fine yesterday but not today. The strangest thing was that the broken piece was no where to be found; so I knew it wasn't one of the cats or the wind that had knocked it on its side. So I texted Greg from Aikane to see if he had heard anything about it from his crew. He said, "I was working right next to that and noticed it was broken but honestly thought it was an old pot so didn't mention anything." Which is strange to me since the broken side was clearly turned towards the ground so it could not be seen unless you picked it up to set it upright again. Aue!

Here are better photos to compare the before and after of the hāpuʻu removal. I really should have taken one yesterday right after Kamaka was done cutting it but was sidetracked by all the other activity. So I took one this morning in almost the same light as the before photo.

Before, 06/06.

After, 06/08.

I watered the new hāpuʻu again this evening; Kaloa said they should be watered deeply for the next couple of days. I will do that until the day I leave. I also pruned off the fronds on the 1st one that was planted in the ground; it was the tallest one, about 4 feet tall. I'm not sure why we didn't prune the fronds off after planting it, but we didn't. We pruned all the rest. Today I could see that they weren't able to get enough water; pruning the fronds would slow the water loss as it regrows in its new spot

I found a new fern growing on the biggest hāpuʻu that was left near the proposed corner of the sewing room. Hopefully I can get it identified from these photos.

I have been thinking more about mounting a new surge protector under the cabinets over the counter where I had the crock pot and rice cooker yesterday. There is one there now but I have not been using it even though it appears to be working. It's a little old; it was inspected in October 1991. Or maybe it was July 10, 1991? Either way, it was almost 30 years ago so I think its time I got a new surge protector.

I did not see the cats today; I think there was too much activity here for them today. There were 2 pickup trucks, a trailer, and about 8 people besides me. The Aikane crew was here for about an hour and were moving around a lot.

In Yunji & Ryan's live interview with Gov. Ige this morning he talked about the 9 cases each last Friday and Saturday. He said they had anticipated a slight uptick in new cases based on the large Memorial Day weekend parties that violated the physical distancing & group numbers criteria; which was confirmed as the source. However, he said the 9 cases each day was higher than they anticipated. He was asked about concerns with another spike in cases due to the weekend peaceful protests in support of racial justice for George Floyd and others; Gov. Ige requested that people who had attended any protest to self-isolate a few days and definitely to stay away from nā kūpuna since they might be asymptomatic carriers. He also talked about travel to other states; he recommended caution because of the much higher virus load in all other states. He said many of the earlier cases were from people becoming infected due to out-of-state travel, then coming back, and infecting others; he wants to minimize that occurrence the second time around.

Ryan, Yunji, & Governor Ige.

Yunji & Ryan also talked to Dr. Victoria Fan from the UH Office of Public Health Studies; she is also a part of the Hawai'i Data Collaborative COVID-19 Tracker which provides publicly available data in a manner helpful to making decisions about COVID-19. She talked about our unique challenges in terms of using models developed for the rest of the country. A big one is that our economy is so tied to tourism that we need better information about how many new cases would be coming in; testing & data would be essential for this. Dr. Fan also talked about the Aloha Trace program where people enter information daily about their health status. She said it helps to provide some real time data, but the biggest challenge is that the majority of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, with data suggesting that about 60% of people are asymptomatic and spread the disease unknowingly; so using only symptoms to track cases has limitations. She said right now contact tracing is an essential part of the picture. She said since the contact tracing system nationally is not strong & targeted, it has resulted in statewide quarantines & shutdowns. She said with programs like in Taiwan, where they have a strong, targeted system that finds the contacts quickly, instituting strict self-quarantine at home can been very effective without the devastating economic impacts on the whole society if done well. They will be having someone from the Hawai'i Data Collective every Monday.