My Summer Vacation: I Got In!

I received an email a little after ʻauinalā (late afternoon); it was from Nicole. I GOT IN! To the contact tracing training, that is. I thought my chances were pretty good since each cohort has 30 people and they had slots for 40 interviews earlier this week; since I got an interview I had a 75% chance! Tonight I found out they actually accepted 35 people in to this cohort; so my chance was actually 87.5%! I have to enroll as an unclassified/non-degree student. Now the work begins.

I got up just after alaula (dawn); the Saffron finch was silent again.

Five minutes after sunrise.

Bobby & Matt from Aikane Nursery got here around kahikole (after dawn), had a nice early start on pruning some of the trees. I worked in the anthurium garden except when they were working on the persimmon. I found out they were the ones trimming Jessica's hedges across he road the past couple of days.

Getting set up for the dayʻs work.

I asked them to start with the ʻohiʻaʻai because that has been one of my top priorities to get things producing again. Since nearly all the fruit have dropped, and I was here to oversee the work, today seemed like a really good day to get that done. Before he started, Bobby and I discussed what I wanted to see with input from him; for the basic starting point we were on track. I gave Bobby leeway to make different cuts when he got up in to the tree and could see much better what was happening than when we were standing on the ground.

Before.

Almost done.

Bobby took down very tall leader & is shaping tree for future work to keep branches low.

After. African tuliptree on neighboring property is now visible.

Bobby and I also talked about my long term goals; he has been assigned as the lead tree guy for the property. I told him my expectation is that the tree crew would be coming by every 3 or 4 months and just touching things up; rather than coming by every couple of years and having to do a lot more cutting to get things back on track. He concurred that what I wanted was the best way to get the trees back in to production and properly shaped for easier harvesting with minimum stress to the tree. I think we will get along just fine!

The next tree Bobby worked on was the persimmon; since it is basically in the anthurium garden I moved by tools and just watched them work. And took a bunch of photos.

Before.

The tree crew wears hot pink so they are very visible while working.

The maintenance crew wears chartreuse.

Bobby drops a branch for Matt.

Bobby has just cut the base of the dead portion he was standing on while in the tree.

Bobby had to remove this section that was starting to rot.

I had them top the panax so the persimmon could spread out towards this side.

Almost done, need to remove a few more branches headed for the roof.

After.

While Bobby was doing the cutting, Matt picked up the branches and prepared them for chipping. He also ran the chipper. Later he spread the mulch around the macadamia.

Cleaning up the little bits.

Matt also picked up the downed fronds and nuts around the coconut and put those through the chipper also. It looked much neater after he was done. I also had them take down the old banana that had fruited and was dying.

Before.

After.

Banana, after.

Earlier, when they were working on the 'ohi'a'ai, I worked on the mondo grass along the pathway. Specifically, I was pulling weeds out of the edge along the garage so that I could plant one tray of mondo grass in the holding area so that I could use the tray for the kupukupu ferns I was going to be digging up as I cleaned out the strip where I was going to plant the anthuriums that I dug up from around the hāpuʻu that had to be moved back in June. There was also a chunk of 4" glavanized pipe partially buried in the mondo grass; Matt helped me remove that.

Before.

During. Yellow dotted line is approximate location of old pipe.

After. Old pipe is now to left of garage wall.

As Bobby & Matt moved on the thin the tangerines, I worked on removing the ferns that were growing along the path and the edge of the planting beds. There was not much they needed to do to the tangerines. Only the northerly one needed to be shortened; Bobby took that one back down to where the original cuts were made 4 years ago or so. That one also needed more thinning than the southerly one that Matt was working on.

Before. Tangerine south of lychee, looking from east.

After. Tangerine to south of lychee, looking from west.

After. Tangerine to north of lychee.

I thought it was going to be a difficult task to remove the ferns but found it was quite easy; almost all the ferns were growing from between the bricks and not rooted in to soil. There were primarily 2 types of ferns; the kupukupu and a type of maidenhair. I got about half of the area done; I went to the end of the weed cloth that I had laid down before. There was enough weed cloth that I could anchor the edge between the bricks after I had removed the fern roots, so I did. I will continue that along the remainder of the path.

Before. Southeasterly edge of Bed #1, looking westerly.

After. Southeasterly edge of Bed #1, looking westerly.

Before. Southwesterly edge of Bed #1, looking easterly.

Looking westerly along the path to anthruium garden.

Looking westerly along path from near southeast corner of Bed #1.

Looking easterly from near southwest corner of Bed #1

Looking westerly at water sitting on path between Bed #1 & Bed #2.

After they finished the tangerines, Bobby moved on to the calamansi. In the meanwhile, Matt chipped the tangerine branches and hauled the calamansi branches back for chipping. The chips were blown in to the space between the macadamia and unknown citrus in the southeast corner. Matt later spread the chips around the macadamia to mulch it and kill the weeds and grass around it; that should make finding dropped nuts easier.

Before. Calamansi from north side.

After. Calamansi from north side.

Before. Calamansi from south side.

After. Calamansi from south side.

After. Closer look.

Initially, Greg had talked about Bobby doing a little pruning of the lychee during this visit, avoiding cutting the branches with fruit. But after looking at it more in the afternoon, they decided to do it all at once on another visit.

It was ʻauinalā (late afternoon) by the time Bobby & Matt were done. I'm not sure if they will be back next month to take care of the lychee or if next month will be grounds maintenance. I hope to hear from Greg before I leave; if not, I'll contact him later.

Matt waves good by as they get ready to leave.

The old clothesline pole marks the edge of the cesspool.

I am leaving it because it reminds people that it is there so they don't drive over it.

After they left I walked around assessing all the work that had been done today and cleaning up my stuff. I also took more photos of the kalo. I don't think it is on the kalo poster. It has a purple piko on a green lau, but not in a Y-shape like the Mana Piko. The ha is reddish-purple but not all the way to the base like the Ulaula Poni. And the edges of the ha are purple black like the Nihopuu but the 2 largest aʻe lau are also reddish-purple-black unlike the Nihopuu which are green.

Star-shaped purple piko.

Purple-black ha and aʻe lau.

Purple-black ha fading to green.


Edges of ha are purple-black with a whitish-green border.

I also checked on the white ginger; it's still blooming.

The holding area is looking much better. I have moved the anthuriums to the front row in anticipation of planting them out tomorrow; they have a lot of new root growth. The ferns I dug up are in the back row; I need to start potting them up individually for transplanting later. My current plan is to plant them in the area that will be adjacent to the stairs coming down from the sewing room. I also discovered the hāpuʻu that I thought had died is still hanging on! I guess I should hold them for a much longer time to see they are still alive; I think I dug this one up in March.

Before.

After.

The tenacious little hāpuʻu.

I really like the outside shower for days like today. After lunch I put a change of clothes out in the shower, so when the work was done today I just walked in to the shower and washed up before I went in to the house. It is also nice for days like today because the shower is kinda breezy so it helped cool me off after all that hot, sweaty work.

The persimmon can be seen from the shower window.

Today Matt did most of the "harvesting". As he was gathering branches to put through the chipper he picked the few remaining ʻohiʻaʻai fruits and gave them to me. I also picked up a guava that dropped while I was walking by the tree.

I did not see the cats at all today; there was too much activity for them. I didn't even see them when I put out food in the evening, but the food disappeared.

There were 23 new COVID-19 cases today bringing the total known cases up to 1334. There was also 1 new death and a few more new hospitalizations. There are now a little over 74% of cases released from isolation.