I have just looked at our little site here after, oh…a couple of years! I really let this get away from me. I’m writing this in April of ’08 and I am going to blaze through my photographs and create a series of pages to bring this journal (oh, what totured use of the word I have made!) up to date. Yes, a few things have happened in the meantime, and it’s a good thing I have been taking pictures, and it’s an even better thing that pictures these days know when they were taken, ’cause I sure don’t.
So—off we go on our touch-and-go tour of the last two years here at Lokelani Ranch!
I finally got that bathroom floor finished. Never did one of these before, and I learned a few hard lessons, one of them being that a few cracks aren’t that big a deal in the end. I’m not remembering if the story behind these lovely boards has been told, but Jonathan noticed a big pile of off cuts at a jobsite: some Brazilian Cherry that should have been left where it was (in the forest, that is). I figured the next best thing would be to just use every bit of it (not burn it, as they were fixin’ to do at that job site). Jonathan and I levered the warped, rejected boards into place and I sanded and finished all of it. Looks pretty nice and now we’re ready to go on to the next chapter in the “Bathroom Remodel Saga,” which is really just a tale of stuff getting done very slowly. Kinda boring, but we are very happy with our bathroom, so worth the wait.
The veggie garden continues to grow and here we have one little corner of it. We got (from left to right) Garlic Chives, Papaya, Taro, Okinawan Spinach, Cardamom, Sugar Cane, and Galangal. Now, that don’t sound like a Thanksgiving feast, but we eat pretty good from this garden, though it’s mostly herbs and flavors, lots of greens and the odd fruit. It just wouldn’t work without the help of a grocery store and the local produce market. I think growing food is a tremendously important thing to do for many reasons, two being foremost: unbeatable nutrition on every level and a pretty deep feeling of satisfaction when you eat your own produce.
Did I say fruit? This was the year we got our first pineapples and we were just like proud parents with these lovely edible bromeliads. Bet you didn’t know they flowered! It’s not always as colorful as this, but there’s a flowering stage that preceeds fruit formation. Sounds pretty normal when I put it like that, it’s just that I’ve seen plenty of pineapples growing and never closely observed the whole process. Just goes to prove that pineapples are not some alien life form (as they may appear), but angiosperms, like most plants. Tasty angiosperms.
On of the big advantages of having so many cooks in the house is the occasional pull-out-all-the-stops feast. Sometimes planned, but often spontaneous. In this case a spread featuring the formidable sushi skills of Patrick on the occasion of a few guests in the house.
It’s the end of June here, and the sparklers have come out at one of our regular full moon bonfires. Maybe slightly off-topic, but I like these pictures a lot, so I share…
This is Izzy, daughter of good friends Jessica and Gabe, whom we know from the Blossoming Lotus. She and her brother Anakin are frequent guests at the bonfires.