A Walk to the Post Office (Part I)

We start off on D Road.
Bandit is always up for the adventure. He doesn't seem to mind that we walk this, or similar, routes to the Post Office almost every day.

It's a bit overcast today, so I am armed with both sunglasses and an umbrella. Perhaps and odd combination but that's how it is here; at any moment it can be either bright and sunny or pouring rain or both.

It is a lovely 72 degrees and we're off.

After D Road we head down Laukapu.
Laukapu at this point is in a bit of dis-repair. The road situation in our area could be a whole other post at some point. Our subdivision (a bit of an overstatement by mainland standards) is responsible for our roads. There is a Road Committee. [I capitalize it only because when people discuss it, it sounds Capitalized.] I have notice two things: 1. the increase in pot holes on Laukapu as you pass Roads B and C, progressing towards D and E; and 2. B and C are asphalt paved and D and E are tar and gravel. Now...I'm not complaining. I like road conditions that make people slow down. However, I surmise that there are no residents of Roads D or E on the aforementioned Road Committee. Just a guess.

After traveling over the various stages of paving on Laukapu, I hang a left on Wright Road.
By island standards this is practically a freeway. At least that's how some drive on it. It has a double yellow line, clearly setting it apart from lesser avenues of travel.
I think we even had multiple cars go by us on our walk today. A major thoroughfare. No doubt about it. Oh, and did I mention....it's a dead-end road that is only 6 miles long.


Along Wright Road we see pretty flowers. No, don't think I've forgotten my rantings from a couple days ago. Yes...Ginger is BAD. But, if it's around I might was well enjoy the beauty of its blossoms. Thanks to Mitch and Julie, I now know that this other one is a black-eyed susan vine. The blossoms are on a vine that has climbed about 30 feet up a tree.

Also along the road we see many dogs. Most bark at us.
These two are especially diligent. They must be talking some serious doggie smack. Bandit ignores most of the dogs, but not these two. He feels compelled to give as good as he gets.


On Wright Road is Volcano's community center, Cooper Center. This is where the weekly farmer's market is. There are numerous other events that I'm not up on yet.

Next to Cooper Center is a super cool skate park. Coconut wireless reports that it was once a tennis court (that no one used). There was discussion of installing a pool. It's been a skate park as long as Mark and I have been visiting Volcano. I have rarely seen it empty.



At the corner we turn onto Old Volcano Road. This was once the highway. It is the main road through town. All stores, restaurants, etc are on this road.


Off to the right is the Kilauea Lodge and Restaurant. It is Volcano's most high-end restaurant. It mingles island, French and Asian flavors. Reminds me of "California Cuisine."
For special occasions, they will announce your celebration with your name on the menu (Happy Birthday, Robin!) and give you balloons at your table.
For the sake of random trivia: it was started by a man who was a makeup artist on the set of Magnum P.I.

More to come later...

Blogger

This is a test. This is only a test.
However, I reserve the righ to convert this to a real blog post without advance warning.

Google has confounded me with its photo link upload and its adsense.
I need to test a few things.
Bear with me.

Ferns

Yesterday’s post focused on plants that we don’t want.

Lest you think that we are surrounded by horrible, soul-sucking, evil plants, I thought I would balance things a bit with some information on the wonderful ferns in our area.

There are three main types: Hapu’u (Hawaiian tree fern), ‘Ama’u & ‘Uluhe (Pacific false stagehorn)

I have also seen other varieties that I haven’t identified yet.

More photos are on their way. Google's Blogger is messing with me an won't let me post. Investigation underway...
In the interim I have posted pics at this Kodak Gallery link: Fern Gallery

The hapu’u grows 15 to 20 feet tall. No joke about being called a “tree fern.” It is triple compounded. Took me a while to figure out what this meant. Basically, if you mark a path from the trunk to the tip of a leaf you will have three lines (make two turns).

The hapu’u is so elegant and beautiful it’s almost magical. This is the fern that brings a smile to my face when I look outside each morning. Yes, it really is that cool.

I hear that the hapu’u has been referred to as the mother of the forest. It provides shade to the under story plants, its roots provide a place for other plants to take hold and when its fronds die they mulch quickly, building the soil for other plants.

The ‘ama’u is smaller. The ones we have in our yard are about 5 to 6 feet tall. These are double compounded. Only one turn if you trace from the trunk to the tip of the leaf.

The ‘uluhe is small in frond size (maybe 6 inches), but it grows like a vine and can reach the tops of trees in a dense, entangled mass. Pretty, but a pain when you are … say … trying to string fencing through a forest.

All three of these ferns have beautiful, intricate fiddleheads (baby ferns).

And, as mentioned above, there's the ferns that I haven't been able to put a name to yet.

The Forest Around Us

One of the things that we have become very aware of after moving into this upper elevation rainforest is the balance of the natural forest and how invasive plants and animals affect the on-going health of the forest.

Apparently, we are not the only folks pondering these thoughts.

The state motto is: "Ua mau ke ea o ka aina I ka pono" - The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness

We have been trying to get to know the plants and animals that surround us. One of our projects is to aid the natural forest by eliminating the invasive plants that damage the forest.

We have two main targets:
Kahili Ginger. This is an attractive plant with gorgeous flowers and an exotic, beautiful smell. This plant will completely take over open space, crowding out native plants.
Linda and Virginia did an excellent job of riding the property of ginger. However, since it spreads by by seed and by rizome, we will need to be diligent to maintain the ginger-free zone.




Next is the Faya tree, also called the Fire tree. This tree was introduced in the 1800s. Like Ginger it has a tendency to take over open spaces before native species can grow. It grows fifteen times faster than the native ohia. It grows so densely that no understory can grow. This is a bad thing.


So, armed with books, images from the web and poison we hope to identify and eradicate. Ginger we can easily spot. Faya is harder.
Is this one, or not?
Still working on that. I don't want to kill an ohia, so will study further.





And then there's the animals.
Have you ever heard of a skink? I hadn't.

Shelves

Okay...so this is not a post about Volcano Village. I got side tracked yesterday by the Car Saga. It gets caps because it has been a bit of a bear. Short version: Subaru is sick and will be staying at the Hilo Subaru spa until at least Tuesday. The diagnosis has something to do with mis-firing and they recommended not driving it very far. We decided to let it have its vacation by the ocean and have a rental until Subi's ailments are cleared up.

Having the reliable rental allowed us to head to Home Depot to pick up a mighty Makita skill saw and some lumber to play with.
Today we made some shelves. Check 'em out!

The Village

Volcano Village is a funny little place.
Stats on population vary a bit. I've seen numbers saying a few as 1,500 people and as many as 2,800. Still not a whopping number.
Volcano may be small on people but its suprisingly big on food and predictably big on forest.

Here's great map I found on volcanovillage.com. Click on it to see a larger version.
It shows the main streets (even ours!) and some key points of interest.

Since this is a blog dedicated to my random musings and humorous moments I've decided to indulge myself by sharing a bit about the town we now live in. Stay tuned for more to come. **

**Note: As some may have guessed - Yes, my shoulder is feeling better. :)

Monday, June 5, 2006 - - Country Living

It hasn't rained in over a week.
While I am really enjoying the bright, sunny, warm weather I have started worrying about water. This being the first time I've lived on catchment I don't have a feel for how long it takes the tank to empty.

This is our primary catchment tank. It holds 5,000 gallons.
We have a back up that holds 2,500 gallons.
Its a basic concept: It rains, water flows off the roof into the gutters, the gutters flow into the tank.

I wasn't entirely sure how to check the water level. I decided to go with the most straightforward, easy way first. It worked.
I climbed up, opened the hatch at the top, and peaked in. DARK.
Hmm.
Okay, now with flashlight. I see water, but can't tell how much. Its crystal clear so the light just shows the bottom of the tank. A good sign, I suppose, but I still can't see the water level.
Hmm.
Okay, now with heavy artilary..........wooden kitchen spoon. I dip in it and it comes out wet. Good. The water line is only about two feet from the top of the tank.
Showers can continue.


One chore related to catchment is keeping the gutters clean.
Since I figured that some of you would get a kick out of me doing this, I captured a moment digitally.
This is me cleaning the gutter along the back of the house.



I had two really good finds this week: a gutter scoop (the red thing) and a machete.
The gutter scoop made the gutter cleaning easier.
The machete will be essential for making Bandit's fence.
Some of you may be wondering why I need a machete to build a fence. Here's a look at the forest the fence needs to go through.

I harvested our asparagus patch today. Some of the spears had grown five inches from yesterday! Here's the harvest.



Another weird pet moment yesterday. I heard Bandit munching on something. Concerned it was cat food, I went in to check. He was noshing on a bar of soap. He had made his way through about a 1/3 of the bar of Ivory before I caught him. No ill effects thus far.

Saturday, June 3, 2006 - - DirecTV Letdown

DirecTV finally showed up today. Nice tech.
He informed us that rather than a 15 pound dish like Dish Network, DirecTV's dish is 100 pounds. Holy, crap!
So, it can't go in the same place as the current dish and, in fact, would need its own pole (like a 8 foot telephone pole). Add to that that this lovely pole would need a hole drilled in lava rock and it starts to look rather dim for DirecTV and the OLN and Tivo that it provides.

On a brighter note, my fabulous Mark got the DVD working this morning.
So....Netflix, here I come!

We have also made an appointment with Dish Network to get started with them.
So far, we have an appointment in a month. If DirecTV's schedule-reschedule pattern is normal, we should have TV by 2010. :)

Later today we'll be headed over to Volcanoes National Park. Its an amazing place, with some of the best hiking we've every done. Check it out: http://www.nps.gov/havo/home.htm
Its about two miles up the road from our house.

Got asparagus today.
When we moved in the asparagus patch started by Linda and Virginia had bolted (gone all wild). I hacked everything down about a week ago. Today I noticed that we have about 12 asparagus spears popping up through wood chips.
If you have never seen asparagus grow, its kind of weird. Each spear comes up on its own, like a worm (see photo).

Farmer's market tomorrow. Then I'm off to the airport to get Mark to Atlanta.

Thursday, June 1, 2006 - - Computer Woes

My big computer crashed and burned today.
Its a real bummer because I was really enjoying my iTunes; had just finished updating the last month of Quicken; recently uploaded all the photos from the camera; and had a nice set up going in the studio.
Now I'm back to the laptop which is good for internet stuff, but doesn't have my other programs. (sigh)

A new hard drive is on order.

Another funny Hawaii moment: When considering whether to buy on line or go to town (Hilo) and buy one we compared the price of shipping ($8.55 priority mail) to the price of gas driving the 60 miles to town and back(roughly $10). The cost difference, plus our desire to stay hidden in the woods, made mail order win out.

I've been playing around with the blog template and editing the html. Hope its looking better. I still have some items I haven't figured out. I'm also going to try to insert more pictures and web links to make things more interesting. So...more to come.

Here's a link to some of our Hawaii moments captured with the camera.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=unklq7x.2ihcy78h&x=0&y=-kjmvts