FOUR YEARS IN PARADISE

       This month marks the end of four years since we closed on this house!  Each year we have made some major improvements, first we added solar hot water, second year we put on nearly enough PV panels to supply our electric needs while still remaining grid connected, the third year we bought the THINK electric car and put its 120 volt charger on the wall and this year we have finally added 8 more PV panels to make up for the added power our car consumes.  Electricity here costs about 40 cents/ kwh so our car, was taking about $90/month.  Now we should be back to having surplus power credit with the utility 9 or 10 months of the year.
 Each year I've been improving, enlarging our small gardens and adding more varieties of fruit trees.  As a result I've had less grass to mow each year and more vegetables for the table.  This year our winter garden was the best yet - largest broccoli heads and kale plus the most pickings of string beans (in fact they are still coming on).  The soybeans have not germinated well however so we won't be having many of those this summer.  The Sweet 100 tomatoes are about six feet high on their way to 16' and I suspect I've allowed them to keep too many branches to be able to keep the fruit size up as I would prefer but so far they have big fruit.  All winter long we have been eating "fruit'n root" salad which I make from roughly equal parts of papaya, pomelo, bananas and yacon root.  We've usually had surplus of all four but now the there are only 4 mature pomelos left in the tree - such a refreshing fruit that we will miss them while the new crop grows from the current 3-4 inches to 7-9".  All the varieties of avocados bloomed heavy this winter but only half of them set fruit heavy, however the best  one has a great crop on that we hope to be eating from September to late December and there will be enough of the early varieties for our family at least.  This will also be the best year for our garden's pineapples which are mostly the extra sweet low acid white variety.  And the purple sweet potatoes just keep coming! 

This month I made the somewhat surprising decision to cut down our nearly 90' tall Durian fruit tree.  It was not very productive having only 5, 3, and then 0 fruit per year, although the fruits were up to 8 pounds.  There are no other Durian trees near us so lack of cross pollination may have been it's problem but another aspect was that it was located between our two breadfruit which are a nearly year 'round basic food source that we both like a lot.  Cutting this tree will allow the breadfruit to branch out lower where we can pick them and also gave us a spot to plant a cacao tree.  Additionally, Durian fruit are capable of killing people when they drop not only because they are heavy but also because they have spikes two to three inches long!   It was no easy matter, however, as the tree grew a few feet from the south fence line at a point where the property is only 80 feet wide, the guest house is just east of it, bananas west of it and other fruit trees in striking distance.  

 Because the Durian had larger branches to the south it really wanted to fall over the fence to the south so first, using my extension ladder and a belaying rope tied to the branch being cut, I cut a couple of the large south branches.  Then I tied a strong rope from about 28' up to my pomelo tree, to the east of where I wanted it to fall, with just a little slack and put my guest, Adam, there.  I then cut a notch aiming for a gap between the mango and the guava that I use for growing vanilla orchids on.  With Adam keeping the rope tight to feel for movement I made the back cut till the tree started to move  - the wrong way.  The rope would keep it from falling the wrong way but we found out that even with both of us pulling with all our might we could not get the tree to come over north.  So I had to get my other good rope (thank you Clyde) and go from the rope we were pulling, around the mango and to Adam's car.  I was very concerned that the second rope might break so we only pulled with the car a little at a time till finally it came over.  One branch of the mango got knocked off, 10' of vanilla vine broke off (which yielded 6 new vanilla starts to give to someone) and we lost three small branches from an Abau tree.  At 48' from the stump the tree dropped less than 2 feet off from the target and although it extended at least 10' past the north boundary, that is the vacant lot and no damage was done.

Last night our Hakalau Jam band was asked to play at a private birthday party for about 100 people.  Most of our regulars showed up and we had a good time and ate way too much desert.  The party host is a vender at the Hakalau market and he lives at the 1,600 foot level.  We are into a bit of a rainy period (which we needed) and at that altitude we were right in the clouds.  The site was prepared with a big quonset shaped tent which mostly kept us dry so we even stayed out past our usual bed time.  Today I've been a bit slow but it was worth it.

Besides being drier than usual the weather here has been very mellow with even less temperature variation than normal.  One day the low was 74 and the high 79 f.  I've not taken my pocket thermometer to the the Ocean with me but it feels like we already have mid-summer water temperatures.