I'm Not on Vacation Any More!

OK, so Rick left early Monday morning and my job as tour guide is done. Now I'm in slave mode. Or dutiful daughter mode. And it's exhausting...

While Rick was here I was requested to go get some yellow ginger from a spot where I saw it growing in the forest. So we did that one day and ever since, whenever I said "What'll I do?" Mom would say "plant ginger". I had already planted some but had another big chunk to put in the ground somewhere. But let me remind you - the soil around here is not soil, its clay. And when it's dry it has to be chiseled. So I had to be prepared to swing a pick to make a hole to plant that stuff in. I ended up digging up and preparing a large area, planted the ginger and some hibiscus she had waiting in pots.

The sun was finally too hot to work in so I found work in the shade. I decided to start doing some trimming in the garden in the front of the house, but the little chainsaw-on-a-stick they had wasn't cutting. After doing a lot of trial and error I discovered first, that the chain was on backward, and then that there was a missing washer that allowed the chain to go loose. Then, if not tightened, the back end of the chain get ridges and would bind up in the bar. Once I discovered that I went to town. So yesterday I spent most of the day (since it was supposed to be 85 degrees) in their "forest" chopping all the lower growth so they can walk around in there, I made 2 huge (the size of a VW bug?) piles of cuttings.

While I'm working Dad occasionally comes to me to ask something about Craigslist and he's been working on composing more ads. It paid off! Last night he got his first call on one of his CL ads, to "recycle" a computer. He's not sure exactly what he'll do with them but he'll apparently be getting them. He also has ads for Noni juice and computer training.

With the chickens running wild here there is the problem of disease being easily spread between the birds. Here it's botulism that kills them and it happens in big waves. I've lost track of how many have been buried since I've been here (8?) and before that there was another 11. On our last day to run around Rick and I found the Del's feed store in Lihue and bought a chicken waterer and some broad-spectrum antibiotic to try to quell the disease.

Somehow in the middle of all that work yesterday Mom and I managed to run to the thrift store so I could pick up a top to work in and stop in at Safeway and Aliomanu Beach (to pick up coral) along the way.

So for the next week this is pretty much what will be going on. Digging, chopping, painting, etc. I won't continue to bore you with all the details but if something interesting happens I'll be sure to send it along.

Aloha!