SIP Gardening Notes

As I mentioned earlier, my grafting experiment was a bust. But while watering today I discovered a few things that were not.

Several years ago I bought a gigantic Cecile Brunner rose at an estate sale. It has never really bloomed much, and I was about to give up on it but I decided to give it one last season. It appears to be doing well! We have gotten several blossoms off it already and they smell heavenly in the kitchen. 

Nearby there are wild strawberries that grow behind the garbage can. The plant grows like a ground cover, which is kinda nice (i.e. green) and I decided to encourage (i.e. water) it. Yesterday I saw something red underneath a leaf and it was a little strawberry. Today  looked for it and found it and its bretheren. I ate the first one and it tasted AMAZING. A cartoony strawberry flavor that reminds me of eating sugary breakfast cereal. I can still smell it on my hands hours later. I found another fresh one for mrguy and fed it to him.

So tiny. So good.

Random Notes From The Coronavirus

Oh Pandemic.

I have a box where I put notes about things that I am grateful for. It's just shy of lightening my mood.

The thing that is most upsetting is uncertainty. I'm not one of those people who can be upset about the entire world. I leave that to my mother, who pre-dementia would call me upset about bad things that happened to people she didn't know. "Did you hear about that accident on the highway?"

Anyhoo, I'm concerned about how long the caregivers will last, working so many days in a row without our helping (cause we can't during the lockdown at her community). I'm worried about the factory that I work for, which is hemorrhaging cash. I'm concerned about losing my job.

On the other hand, I know which of my garden weeds is edible.

Moving on to the random parts of the day, news from camellia grafting is grim -- I think there were no survivors. On the other hand, as I have mentioned I have come to really enjoy the camellia we have! And the recent warm weather has led to the camellia deciding to make every bud into a flower, which has prolonged the blooming season. And I am enjoying that.

The remnants of the grafting project have led to a new project: rooting. I bought some rooting hormone and watched some videos and I am trying to make new camellias out of the old branches. Hope springs eternal, it turns out.

In the "things you never wanted to know" department, I bought log spray a while back. It is better than air freshener and this particular variety, from Squatty Potty, smells really nice. Plus it is called "unicorn Gold". What could be better? Displayed next to the world's worst nail color and my new Davines tinted hair conditioner. Did I mention this before? It's really nice. A little pink here, a little purple there. Have to liven up those Zoom meetings, Zoom pub quizzes and Zoom salons.

On the mama front, she's fine. Freaked out yesterday because she didn't remember that she had seen me. I drive to her place, she comes out front with her caregiver and I stand on the sidewalk and yell to her. Her voice isn't strong and her place is next to a freeway entrance, and she doesn't want to wear her hearing aids with her mask, so our visits are unremarkable. I don't fault her for not realizing that I had been there, but her kind of dementia is the one where you don't know you have dementia, so she worried that she has dementia. Too late, Darling!

I make little love notes or funny notes for her caregivers to give her, with candy inside. Sometimes that helps.

I wish I could hug her.

Hawaii 2019, Day 8

Big finish, Peeps!

After days of hearing mrguy proclaim how much he loves Maui and planning for our next trip to Maui, *this* trip to Maui was coming to an end.

We had a lovely breakfast and noticed a songbook by Helen Desha Beamer on the piano. There was even a photo of Kimo Henderson, for whom she composed Kimo Hula, which our band loves to play.

We went to the library and looked at all of the local history books. Found the books about presidents, and mrguy couldn't help but make a tableau of contrasts for us:

We looked at a bunch of city directories and almost had a fight about it. Mrguy was right about whatever the argument was.

For the last two days we'd been trying to determine the GPS coordinates of the Wailuku Ditch, because that's very close to where the family house was. We went in search of the ditch, which is on the way to the dump. People really drive fast there, and crossing the road was treacherous but we did it.

Picturesque, innit?
After this we went to the Makawao Cemetery, and the military cemetery next door, because this is where some of our people are buried.

We were standing out in the cemetery with an electrical storm coming and I was pretty sure we were going to be turned into human yakitori, but it worked out ok.

And then we met farmer's daughter at Rock & Brew, which has a horrible name, but is so much better for hanging out at than the quaint place where we were supposed to meet. It was great to come together after we'd been to the places where she'd sent us.

So there you go. We had an amazing time. We learned interesting things about the family. Like Toshiko Takaezu was the family's maid for a while. I want to learn more about this experience from Toshiko Takaezu's perspective, of course.

And that's it. Hawaii 2019 is complete. We have plans to go back to Maui in October, unless we die before then.

Hawaii 2019, Day 7

Monday was the day we started our family history research. What could be better than genealogy in Hawaii?

In the morning we went to the sugar plantation in Puunene. We didn't know a ton about the family's involvement, other than there was an aunt who was a nurse and came from the Mainland to run the plantation hospital. She then married the foreman of the plantation. Her brother came over and was the facility engineer. We have sepia-tone film of the family on Maui in the 20s or 30s. There you go.

So we went to the plantation museum, and I sat down on a bench near a map and pulled out a binder they had for visitors to look at. There, a few pages in, was a map that showed the location of our family's house. So cool. This is the map but not the house:

They had sumo at the camp back in the day:

We took photos of the maps, and set ourselves the task of locating the site of the family house.

But first we met up with a friend of mrguy's who had recorded with him at the studio. He has a place here where we live, but he and his partner picked up and moved to Kihei. Go figure. It was nice to meet someone who was starting over in Hawaii. He bought a beat up house that was filled with termites and is gradually rehabbing it.

After lunch and a tour of his house, we went to the Friends of the Library store. I can't recall why, but it was interesting and full of treasures and mold. I sneezed a lot.

We met up with our friend Ramona for dinner. She's awesome and on our last trip she came all the way over to Oahu to meet up with us, which was a ball. I can't believe that I didn't take any pictures of us, our meal, whatever. We went to a local place, and the music wasn't really tremendous until a guy in the crowd came up and played one of the most beautiful versions of Hawaiian Soul I've ever heard.

The sunsets on Maui are terrific.

Hawaii 2019, Day 6

Day 6 -- Maui.

I gotta say that Maui was not my favorite idea, but mrguy really wanted to go. And we had favorite *people* we wanted to see, but I didn't think I liked Maui that much. Turns out that mrguy was so very right.

He picked out a bed and breakfast for us that changed my mind about bed and breakfasts. It was gorgeous. The people who ran it were local and not stuck up. The other travelers were nice and interesting people. The room had exceptionally cold air conditioning, and I had been suffering from heat exhaustion up to this point.

Where do I start about how terrific Maui was? Well...

We got there on my birthday, and had dinner with the farmer's daughter and her husband at the Mill House Maui Tropical Plantation. It had been several years of catching up that needed to happen, and I love her. Mr farmer's daughter had been suffering from a crazy nervous system / immune crash with mercury poisoning elements. The last few years had been pretty awful until they met a functional medicine doctor, removed his fillings and started taking magnetic clay baths. Slowly, his health and stamina have increased.

I worry for them, but they seem to be on the mend. This was the last we saw of mr farmer's daughter this trip, but we were able to hook up with the farmer's daughter herself later on. In the meantime she sent us to several cool points of interest.

I continue to crave Mill House's Kalo Risotto...

Hawaii 2019, Day 5

We started our day with another swim. Oh my gosh. I love this beach.

We then went to a vinyl and photography equipment swap meet in Kaka'ako. On the way, we passed the Wailana Coffee House and are happy to say that it is now closed. The last time we went there it smelled like pee and we couldn't get waited on and there were screaming children tossing wet sugar packets in the dining room. Which of those was the deal-breaker? Hmmm.

Didn't know what to expect at the swap meet but ended up having a nice conversation with a guy who was selling the vinyl that he had already sampled. He is mostly out of the DJ business now, and started a DJ lifestyle clothing line (whose name I've forgotten). He mentioned that there was a DJ battle happening during the World of Dance convention at Blaisdell later in the day, which could have been super fun. I'd recently seen a Q&A with DJ Q-bert...but we passed because that seemed like a big time investment.

Then we ate lunch at the Highway Inn, which was tasty and we'll definitely do it again if it still exists when we come back.

The end of the day was epic. Bryan Tolentino had posted that he and George Kuo were going to be playing at the Hibiscus Club. We've never been there, it's old school, but I've taken many pictures of that building over the years because it has a great sun shade. Of course I can't find any at the moment so that's why I am not posting them.

It was so cool!! Bryan and George do not play gigs like this ever, but a friend who ordinarily plays / books the club was going to be late coming back from seeing the Rainbow Warriors play in Las Vegas so they sat in. With Kalani Kockett, also. This was all happening around dinner time.

Then Greg Sardinha got off work and walked in for some refreshment, with his instrument in hand. Then the musicians on stage started heckling him to get on stage with them. 

For the next hour or so everybody was on stage, and trading instruments and the guy who was coming from Las Vegas, whose name I did not catch arrived and he can apparently play all instruments. It was so fun and so jolly and we felt 100% lucky to see such an amazing show. We left with huuuuuge smiles on our faces.

Hawaii 2019, Day 4

We started our day swimming at the beach and thinking about the wild crab scene that had taken place there the night before. Funny.

Then two objectives were met at the Sheraton: the Apple Store for a connector, and the ukulele store. This place was the scene of the crime the year before, when we looked for a new uke for mrguy and found my Kanile'a 5-string instead. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Walked in, picked up this Tahitian ukulele and immediately purchased it:

Yep. Strung with fishing line.

While we were talking to the salesman, we mentioned that we'd purchased a 5-string Kanile'a with two high A strings the last time we were in the store. He said that he almost purchased it himself. He indicated that something was mixed up in the Kanile'a order and instead of a arriving as a leftie, it was a rightie with the two high A strings. It was nice to know the story behind the uke. And mrguy left empty handed again!

Then we went to Hungry Ear and bought a bunch of records (for me, without hearing them at all). I wanted to check out some more records produced by George Chun, who had produced a few records that I really like. I also got an early cassette featuring Del Beazley.

We wound up our day at Diamond Head Grill, where the wasabi shoyu ahi plate never fails to please.

Hawaii 2019, Day 3

I had a mad craving -- banana mac pancakes from Koa Pancake House in Kaneohe. So we went and had pancakes and someone bought our breakfast and someone else bought *their* breakfast, so we then bought someone else's breakfast. They got the better deal, but it did a heart good.

Then we went to Kanilea to look for ukuleles and mrguy almost pulled the trigger on one, but didn't. I got a replacement peg for my 5-string.

Back home at the hotel.

A "little" Happy Hour snack -- ulu mash and flatbread.

Then we met our friend at Michel's for a late dinner, to include table-side caesar salad and cherries jubilee. 

It was FABULOUS. We were the last people in the restaurant, and as things settled down inside we were treated to a crab party on the beach outside the window. I had no idea! Late at night crabs come out onto the beach and chase each other around. It was super entertaining but didn't photograph well.