Mountains and Islands

Raindrops keep fallin ' on my head..... but that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turnin ' red. Cryin's not for me... cuz .... I'm never gonna stop the rain by complainin '...... Ah but if I could, just by complainin ', I would. On Sunday, with the water coming down, I had to get out and about. So I went to the Maku'u Farmers' Market. The place was packed. There was actually a traffic jam of people trying to get in and out of the parking lot from the highway. When I asked the juice lady what was up, she just replied, "This is what happens when it's been raining for two weeks straight and then there's a break in the weather. Everyone just has to get out." Indeed. I picked up papayas and bananas at the market, then found my way to a new pet supply place in Hawaiian Paradise Park. How's that for a corny community name? They call it HPP for short. There is also an area called Hawaiian Beaches, Hawaiian Acres.... pretty imaginativ...

The weather's been less than optimal lately, unless you happen to be a duck or a toad or a fungus. Last Thursday night, I attended my first Hawaii Island Tea Society meeting. The Tea Society is a non-profit organization recently formed to promote the cultivation and processing of tea as a crop on the Big Island. Tea grows well here and artisan tea masters are now beginning to understand how best to process theirs for high quality green, oolong or black teas. At this meeting, a grower in the Volcano area demonstrated his method for processing and drying oolong . We all tasted his finished product and, I must say, this was not my grandma's Lipton. This tea, completely unadorned, was flowery fragrant, smooth and mellow. It tasted naturally sweet. The difference between green, oolong and black teas are not the plants but the length of time the tea is oxidized and fermented before drying. For oolong , only the top three leaves of a new shoot are picked. For green, only the top two...

According to Wikipedia, "Jury-rigging" or "jerry-rigging" refers to makeshift repairs or substitutes, made with only the tools and materials that happen to be on hand. Where I live, we simply call it Puna style. As you can see here, Lucy's all about Puna style. To give you an example, our storage shed is Puna style. Our greenhouses are Puna style. Ron has learned that he's been doing things Puna style for much longer than he's known what that is. Back in Colorado and before that in California I called him the jury-rigging king. In Gunnison, he made a funky plywood doggie door in our cabin to keep out the cold and let the pups go in and out through out garage. It came complete with a clasp made of a wooden peg. In California, while we were still dating and I was still in school, he connected a fan to the battery under the seat of my VW Beetle so I could kinda-sorta have air conditioning. It worked great until the wire shorted and began to burn, filling th...

There's a new sushi bar in town! Yay ! We'll go tomorrow night, so I'll report my review next blog. I've been thinking that Hilo could easily support another sushi joint, especially considering that the the largest segment of the population is Japanese. Today was a short one for me at ye ol ' wine factory. Most days are borderline crazy with visitors. Today, however, business was painfully, boringly slow, so one of us was asked to volunteer to go home. Both of my co-workers said they would prefer to stay, so I gratefully (and I think gracefully) skadoodled . Or is that skeedaddled ? I'm sitting here watching the news and see that some researchers have attached transmitters to a bunch of adolescent honu (turtles). The green sea turtle, which is endangered and protected in Hawaiian waters, is the subject of their study. The transmitters can send a signal from under the ocean surface to a satellite orbiting the earth. They'll track patterns of movement to l...

The sun will come out, tomorrow. Bet yer bottom dollar that tomorrow, there's be SUN..... TOMORROW, TOMORROW, I love ya, tomorrow, it's only a day away. Did I mention that the climate here is somewhat humid? This is what it does to my hair. Also, the wall behind me is the color I've painted the guest room. Pretty bold, huh? Today was very foggy. At least the wind has died down. It blew so hard yesterday and the day before that we lost our carport tarp. The wind just ripped it to shreds. Our Puna style greenhouses needed a little repair too but overall, they survived. We've got pepper plants with blossoms, peas and soy beans sprouting out and cabbage seedlings searching for daylight. There's a hole in the neighbor's fence. We know this because his goat came to visit the other day into our yard. That would be OK except for the fact that he (the goat, not the neighbor) seems to fancy munching on our coffee trees. The neighbor is a nice guy though and as soon as we...