Photos

 Our first papaya from a plant that we had planted as a 4" pot start.  That plant only took 8 months to get six feet high and to bear its first fruit.  Not only that but the flavor is far better in all the local papayas then those I had tried that were shipped to Washington.  Each of those little seeds, we found, could grow to first production in our garden in 10 to 12 months.  We now keep 6 plants in our garden and usually need to eat two fruit each day.

This is our talapia tank that is watered by two downspouts from the roof.  I regulate how much flow by bypassing one or both downspouts when the fish don't need fresh water.  We have a small airator going all the time and too much fresh water would be undesirable because it would dilute the algae that are a large part of the fishes diet.  In this year of drought there have been a few days when we wanted more rain for the fish.  At this point there are 60-80 4"-5" fish and we haven't eaten any except one of the breeders that we started with.  It was the best talapia I've ever had.


The Green Sea Turtles are always present around Hilo.
At least, I can always find some one of four places.
They seem to be only of mature size here while on the Kona side it is common to find immatures in the one foot size.  I guess that is because we don't have any sandy beaches on the windward side.  Once, at Hilo's Carlsmith Beach, we spotted a mature with an injury that had a radio glued to its back.  We were later told that it had been treated for a boat inflicted wound on Oahu and released there.