Month: April 2017

Easter

We dyed eggs with natural colors and tied flowers and leaves to them.





Leilani made a few more with crayons

Spring, Gardens and Geckos


Prince Kuhio Vine is still blooming


Poor Jahi disappeared… I fear the worst after 3 days


Plumeria or Frangipani

We grew a lot of lettuce, chard and kale in the gutter garden, now all transplanted to our new big veggie garden

The Poinsetta started late and is still going

Leilani helped a lot with the gardening

We only have one pineapple this year, but plated a few more

The first start of our veggie garden. By now it is 4 times as large, because our lime tree died I have a lot of sunny space.


Stephanotis

Our geckos. Some of them are almost pets by now. Many have names, and even the parents start being able to tell them apart. Andy’s are named Mac, PC (who is fat), Android and iOS (these 2 are tiny). I can tell Tailless, Midnight-Racoon and Bob apart (although Leilani believes Bob are actually 2 different Geckos). Mostly we remember their names by territory, but their patterns and colors really do have a lot of variation.





This is one of our least favorite spiders – the biting crab spider, very itchy bite

Food

Kauai winter fruit

We noticed many papayas have beautiful star or flower shaped patterns if they are cut near the stem.

One of our biggest avocados. They are all eaten now, and both trees made lots of little fruit already.

Another papaya-flower

I harvested my turmeric in 2 installments – first time about 10 pounds (5kg), most of which I juiced and froze, 2-3 pounds I gave away


2 pounds or so I dried and ground, it is a lot of work. All of it of course needs to be dug up and cleaned, but then for drying it needs to be sweated, boiled, sliced, and the air drying in Hawaii is iffy and needs to be watched constantly, if it is too humid or too cool it needs to be put into the electrical dryer or the oven so it does not rot or get moldy.

Leilani and I still bake bread.

Solar cooking.

Second turmeric harvest. This time I got slightly more, I assume about 12 pounds – 6 kg. I left it in a big bowl, and once a week or so I put some into the vitamixer and blend it with ginger, lemon juice and honey into a super-spicy yellow smoothy. I keep 1/3 in the fridge and freeze the rest and use it over the next days.

December harvest (last old photo, I’m caught up now until the end of February)

Jim leaving, Shawn arriving

We hiked from donkey beach to the Secluded Cove



Dinner and beer at the Kauai Beer Company


Another Kealia beach fire on the next day