My Summer Vacation: Kalo Patch

I did a load of laundry this morning; my second to the last load of this trip. My sheets will be the last load tomorrow morning; they are the bulkiest items I would take back when the old washer was not working well. With this new washer I will not have so much dirty laundry in my suitcase when I pack. I also wanted to check my theory that the gray water from the laundry was being directed towards the kalo; I had never been outside when I was doing laundry before, but today I would be. And I found out my hunch was right! Its a good thing I use a biodegradable laundry detergent.

I did not see the end of the pipe until the weeds had been removed.

I dug out the end and also removed mud & roots from the pipe.

There was a little water so I sort of made a little trench to direct the water towards the other kalo.

Here's the rinse water flowing along the base of the kalo.

Later I noticed that Delphin has kalo growing along his other property line. I will have to ask him whether it is upland or wetland kalo; if it is upland I will have to find out what to do to give the kalo here the best chance at thriving.

The Saffron Finch was early this morning! But I did not let that stop me from sleeping a little longer!

Birdrise thirty-five minutes before sunrise.

Time to get up! Seventeen minutes after sunrise.

I finally got around to vacuuming out the closet in the back bedroom; the one that the plumbing runs through to get to the inside shower. When Leslie was adjusting the shower she had to get in to it and I found out it was quite dirty; lots of wood chips from when the plumbing for the shower was installed.

This is after I vacuumed. I also put a new Damp Rid bag in here.

I also paid the bill for the all the shower work, Mike had an extra space in my email address so I did not get it until today.

I got an email about the contact tracing training yesterday that I didn't see until this morning. It was about the class that started yesterday for the Track 1 (clinical healthcare professionals) 1&1/2 day training. For Track 2 (which is what I am eligible for, undergraduate degree health career-oriented preferred) they say the 30 people for the first 6-week cohort have been contacted; since I didn't get anything I am not one of those. Although there will be an additional 7 more 6-week cohorts scheduled through the 2020-2021 academic year, I am probably not going to make the cut since 1200 people applied for 320 training spots! And they are looking for health oriented undergraduate degrees. But I will apply to the Medical Reserve Corps anyway; I enjoyed the MRC classes & activities I participated in while I was in Washington.

This is the Medical Reserve Corps site for the Pacific region.

Since Aikane weeded the area to the east of the anthurium beds for me, I spent the morning putting weed cloth down. My goal was to cover the entire area today. And it was going fairly well, too.

Before.

The first row; the tree was a little problematic but I managed.

For the second row I made a gap for the ginger.

While I was working on the weed cloth, I noticed that the ginger was not looking like red ginger anymore. What I thought were the bracts were turning yellow; I now think it might be yellow ginger (Hedychium flavescens). While it will have a wonderful fragrance if it is yellow ginger, I was hoping for red ginger since it is a long lasting "flower" for use at the cemetery. Hopefully, I will be able to see for sure before I leave.

If it was red ginger, the green bracts would be turning red and be much more closed.

Greg found the broken pieces! He texted me about 9:30, letting me know he dug through their green waste piles and he found the pieces of the orchid pot. He said they would compensate me for the pot. When he brought the pieces back, I told him I did not want compensation for a $13 pot. Instead, I wanted them to use it as a teaching moment about their workers taking responsibility for accidents. I showed him the area I was working on and said because there was not going to be anything over the top of it before I leave, they might snag it or rip it or whatever. If that happens they need to fix it, end of story; just do the right thing. Same goes for anything else that happens on the property.

Shortly after Greg left it began to drizzle; I kept working through that. I finished the section between the path and the ginger. Then it began to pour. I waited to see if it would stop; it slowed down a bit but did not look like it would stop soon so I headed inside. It was a wise move; it only rained harder for a while. It was early evening before it let up. Around dinner time it dried out but later in the evening it began to pour again. That's one of the reasons why upland kalo does well here; there is enough rain to keep the ground moist enough for it.

Is it going to stop?

Nope. It got worse.

The geckos like guava guts! I watched Gecko #1, whom I have decided to call Spot since he has red spots instead of bars, go to the mountain apple first, take a couple licks. Then Spot headed over to the guava guts; he spent a long time there. Martina also liked the guava but earlier in the day Spot would chase her away from the food. Did you know geckos make another sound besides the clucking noise they are known for? Its like a very fast chirping noise; I think it might be the sound they make when they are warning another gecko off. I would hear that sound before Spot would chase Martina away.

Spot has already tried the mountain apple; he now moves on to the guava.

He appears to like it.

He stayed for quite a while.

Martina also liked the guava.

Spot chased Martina away from the guava, but got spooked by me when I reached over the laptop to take the photo.

Martina spent a lot of time exploring the keyboard of my laptop; I used her curiosity to figure out how long she is. I measured the keys she covers in the photo; she is about 4" long. In several pictures you can see the bulges on the side of her neck caused by the calcium sacs; in a couple she also looks fatter.