Hello Sunshine

We have been deluged with some heavy rains this week, but then, fortunately, the sun will come out the next morning as brightly as these daylilies shine and shrink the temporary ponds back to their former sizes. Because I have been doing a lot of excavating and removal of invasive plants and grasses I don't want, there is a lot of mud most of the time because of the amount of rain we always get. That's an inconvenient blessing because I almost never have to water any of my plants.

It's a few more weeks of substitute teaching and then I'll be working on the land for a good solid two months. I'll have to be careful with money, but will be so much happier when I do not have to get up at dawn to go to this or that public school until mid-afternoon. I rented a track excavator for a full week mid-spring and was able to make headway in the front at the street, uncovering and piling up piles of stones for future walls and piles of dirt for future plantings. I was able to carve about 50 feet into the land for a future access road. Now all the handwork of wall-building and removing more invasive plants and moving soil around will need those two months.

I now know that when I see a rise or a fall in the terrain, other than the rocks – and tires! – that were plopped onto my land in the front long before I bought it, it is pretty much the shape of Pele's body with about 12" of the heaviest soil I have ever lifted in my life made up of crushed pahoehoe lava and rainforest muck from plants only recently decayed. Other islands in our chain are older and the soil will more closely resemble soils of places where I formerly lived and worked where mountains had long ago eroded. This land is all newly made by the volcano (in geologic time). I have learned that I must listen to Pele's music. She was here first and will still be here when I am gone. It's her garden as well as mine. So we are working on this land together.

Aloha to you all...

P.S. I added commenting for all subscribers to posts!