It's Prime Rib Night!

Friday is Prime Rib & Lobster night at Minnie's; I try to get that while I'm here. I only order the prime rib for dinner, which is so large it feeds me for 2 dinners; the lobster would be overload. During the week, if I am running errands around lunch time I also stop and pick up a Catch of the Day plate; I want to help support Charmaine since I can.


The Saffron Finch is still getting up before sunrise! And I am still sleeping in after it wakes me up. This morning I did not set my usual 6 o'clock alarm because I wanted a little more rest after traveling yesterday; I decided to get up when my body felt like it. But I got up at 6:15 so it didn't make much difference. About an hour later it was raining and windy.

Birdrise, thirty-five minutes before sunrise.

Twenty-six minutes after sunrise.

Not only was it raining, it was also kinda windy.

I did an early morning walk through, checking on most of the plants. The fruit on the jaboticaba has come and gone; I forgot to check the Japanese chestnut next to it. The flowers on the popcorn orchid are gone; I can now split it and fit the larger piece to the orchid pot. The smaller piece will be attached to one of the old hāpuʻu stumps. The macadamia has a lot of nuts on the tree with more falling to the ground than on my last visit; I shall have to get in to the daily habit of harvesting them, then husking them before they dry out too much. There are a bunch of coconuts that are ripening; I need to get a machete and harvest some.

Jaboticaba.

Popcorn Orchid.

Macadamia.

Dwarf Samoan Coconut.

The papaya tree has some small green fruit; it looks like it might be a female tree that is producing unfertilized fruits which are smaller. The compost bins are getting overgrown by the surrounding weeds; I think I will put some weed cloth around them so the weeds don't get too out of control. I forgot to check the bananas; I'll do that tomorrow.

Papaya.

Compost bins.

Almost all those mountain apples that were lining the branches last month are now on the ground; which is great! There are mountain apples in all stages of decay which means no pigs have gotten into the yard! If they had been getting in there would be no mountain apples on the ground! There was also no pig poop in the backyard. There were also a bunch of guavas on the ground but there were also a bunch still in the tree; if I was here full time I would have been able to gather enough to make a batch of guava jelly! Aue!

Mountain Apple.

Lots of fallen mountain apples means no feral pigs getting in the yard!

Guava.

The lychee are still green; I don't think they will ripen before I leave. The avocado tree looks healthy.

Lychee.

Avocado.

The ōlena is filling out the patch it is growing in; while here I want to put weed cloth around the edges and start cleaning the weeds out of the patch. I also need to move the other ginger out of there; I think it is the white ginger that is in there. I will replace it with the edible ginger that I removed from the anthurium patch. The 2 white ginger bracts that were here last month are done flowering but there is a new one that is currently flowering and another that will probably bloom before I leave. The red ginger starts are doing well; I need to find a place for them. The blue ginger that I dug out of the anthurium garden is also doing well; but then, nothing seems to kill it! There are shoots coming up through out the anthurium garden where I thought I had gotten everything out! Aue!

Ōlena.

White ginger.

Portulaca (L) and Red Ginger.

Blue Ginger.

The kalo patch is looking good! But there is some grass coming back in. I will have to do a better job of getting the grass out of there. I also need to enlarge the patch; I thought there was only 1 kalo in the anthurium bed but found another one there this morning.

Upland kalo wanna-be-patch.

L to R: ferns, upland kalo, Christmas cactus, anthuriums.

As I walked up the path to check out the plants in the holding area, something didn't look right; there was a hāpuʻu frond growing through the middle of the white ginger patch. I looked closer and realized that one of the hāpuʻu "branches" had broken off and was now laying on top of the white ginger. I had not expected this hāpuʻu to break so I had not propped it up like I had some of the others.

Path in to the anthurium garden.

Hmmm? Why is that hāpuʻu growing in the ginger?

The broken hāpuʻu "branch".

On the far side of the fallen hāpuʻu the Coelogyne was doing well. I want to move one or two of the plants to other areas.

Coelogyne on fallen hāpuʻu.

The anthuriums and other plants in the holding area look like they are doing well. But the mondo grass needs to get weeded. I had weeded the first 2 clumps that I dug up but did not have time to weed the second 2 clumps that were dug up.

L to R back row: blue ginger, anthuriums; front: mondo grass.

Close-up of anthuriums & mondo grass.

The hāpuʻu that was trimmed is looking well; the trimming did not seem to bother it. I started to check on the pieces that we replanted and take reference photos to compare to those I took on June 10th, shortly after we replanted them, but decided to do that tomorrow. I will take my laptop out and make sure I get the photos from the same locations so comparisons will be easier to see how much or little things have changed. I also need to clean up the old fronds that I was using to create some shade when we first potted the plants.

It doesn't look like the trimming hurt it.

The largest piece removed from the big hāpuʻu.

Several of the African Tulip stumps are still trying to keep on growing. They're pretty tenacious; I have done a cut stump treatment on most of them twice already!

It's still trying to grow.

This one, too. Need to re-treat them both.

This one never got the cut stump treatment. I thought it was too close to the calamansi.

The Meyer lemon is doing great! It has another crop of lemons coming on. The Blue Agapanthus under it is in full bloom; I will take some flowers to the Ohaka. As always, the calamansi is fruiting and dropping fruit like crazy! The White Agapanthus under it is also in full bloom: I'll take some of those, too, to the Ohaka.

Meyer lemon.

Blue Agapanthus.

Calamansi & white agapanthus.

Finally the area by the gas tank is still relatively weed free. And still in need of a little more red lava rock to complete that project.


 While walking around I found several projects that I have added to my Gardening To Do List.

This panax needs to be removed so the Ti can grow unhindered.

The half of the Tahitian Ti nearest the house needs to be removed.

Need to decide whether I want to plant the fallen hāpuʻu at the stake or the rock.

I still had some eggs that Toto gave me on my last trip; they were still good. I boiled the goose eggs and made egg salad with them for lunch. Since I had not made any Best Keto Bread, I put them on the Parm Crisps I had left from the last trip. The Crisps weren't; maybe I should put them in the freezer next time? I supplemented the egg salad with Cheddar Cheese Whisps and guacamole; I used the Whisps like tortilla chips!

That's a tablespoon sitting with the goose eggs.

Egg salad on Parm not-so-Crisps with almond milk.

Guacamole and Whisps.

They work just as well as tortilla chips but with no carbs!

While I was finishing lunch, I saw Martina walking across the kitchen floor. She had been on the table earlier, but I had not brought in any guavas so there was no food on the table for her so she didn't stick around.


This evening I got an email inviting me to apply for the 2nd cohort for Track 2 Contact Tracing training. If I get in it will start on July 27th. The email seemed to imply that classes would be in person. If this is true it is a good thing I decided to only stay here for 2 weeks.

The supplementary info was entered online through Google Docs.

I wonder if this is part of the selection process?

As I was starting my walk to check on the plants I saw Mom Cat approaching the fence; it looked like she was headed to the front porch. I had not put any food out in the morning since I didn't want the House Sparrows to eat the food. Later when I did put food out, no one touched it for a while; I have to get them used to being fed again.

Mom Cat is way in the background by the fence post.

Here she is wondering what I am doing.

Right after lunch and no one has found it yet. It was gone after dinner.

Tropical Storm Cristina is still slowly moving westward. Its predicted path shows it crossing in to the Central Pacific region some time on Wednesday. But by then it is predicted to weaken to a post-tropical remnant low.


There were 28 new COVID-19 cases reported today bringing the total known cases up to 1158. There were no new deaths but there were a couple new hospitalizations. Seventeen of the cases are associated with one person who went to an exercise class at 2 different gyms and infected people at both places. Aue! Due to the spike in cases here as well as in the Sunbelt, there are discussions on pushing the relaxing of the 14-day quarantine back as well as shutting in-restaurant dining and gyms down again. An option being examined instead of shutting all these type of businesses down is issuing red cards like they do for food safety violations. If a restaurant or gym is not following physical distancing guidelines, requiring masks to be worn, not having hand sanitizing available, or limiting the number of occupants, then a red card will be issued and that specific business is shut down until it comes in to compliance. That seems to be a better way to do it rather than shutting down all the same type of businesses and hurting the ones that are doing things right.






Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Mary, Jill, & Caroline!