twins! (and a new pasture)

New Pasture is done! Given time issues.... we hired Darrel to fence in a new pasture on the upper property.

GB and Damien are discussing the specifics

2 giant albezia trees are DOWNsee how dense it is in there?

Fenceline complete!

Yesterday we adopted twin goats, Thorn and Tamarind. They are 3 week old nubians from a litter of 4. They need a few more weeks to get more mamas milk and then they'll come home with us. They're going in the new pasture, but we need to make them a shelter. We're "pros" at that!

storm

November 2009 was stormy. We had 2 big weekend storms, the first of which resulted in 2 of our temple bamboo falling over :(
They were originally planted valentines day 2007. And then Super Bowl Sunday 2008 one of the Bamboo fell in the big landslide. It was replanted and is doing well, though much shorter than it's counterparts.

So with 2 down, we had to figure out what to do. We chose the "easy" route. Ra'am and I dug out the holes that they came out of... GB gave the bamboo a big haircut with the chainsaw, and we righted them. We're HOPING they come back ok. They're hardy plants, so they should be fine, but we're sad anyways!

Wet and stormy day! The pool was needing water before this.... now? Totally full!

Bamboo down :( Digging out from underneath

new pond

Pre-Bar Mitzvah we were in a mad rush to spruce things up around here. Unfortunately GB spent the last months leading up to big event all laid up.... but we still managed to get a ton done!
Of course GB was the instigator of this pond. He had this great idea to lay out the humongous and heavy rocks.... but I was busy doing other things. So he called up Heather and asked her if she'd do it, and she agreed. Next thing I knew, GB had laid out all of the rocks himself. Crazy GB!

I posted one picture of the new pond, but there are in progress shots of us sealing it:

The pond is great, but we haven't been able to keep fish in it yet because the ph is so high. We're working on lowering it

palms

We had a great visit our to Floribunda nursery last week 12/23. Our intention was to buy 4 palms (lanceolata) for around the koi pond, since they won't grow above the roof. Of course we walked away with a ton of stuff....


For around koi pond
Dypsis Lanceolata (horizontal stripes)
Pinanga Pilippinensis (small trunk aka Noam’s choice)


By pool
Beccariophoenix madagascariensis (substitute for coconut palms) (planted near coco palms- which will probably have to go when they start dropping stuff cuz they're too close to where people go)




For front gate
Carpoxylon macrospermum


Ivory nut
Metroxylon vitiense (plant near wet spot)

For near chicken coop
Dypsis Saintlucei (white trunk)


For near Bambusa vulgaris
Prichardia beccariana

Red Betel Nut (substitute for Sealing Wax Palm)
Areca Macrocalyx (red)

The Hairy palm! (planted in pool lawn)
Dypsis Fibrosa


Substitute for ‘Areca’ Dypsis Lut.
Pinanga coronata blunt leaf

We also planted a bunch of vetiver grass on the Hilo side of the pool, that we got from Rob and Mike. We're really excited about this grass because we have so many erosion prone areas, and this grass is supposed to be good for it (and it's sterile! and easy to propagate!)

What the farmer gets for the holidays

First, we only have three cats. So when Buck and Lena's friend was leaving for Mongolia last week, we inherited his kitty. It's the dark one in the lower left. Her name is Uki, but that is sometimes Luka's nickname. We are going to have to give her a new name. It is easier than renaming Luka!

Milo is a little iffy on our new cat. Notice the puffing of his tail.

Matt and Heather surprised us with a live gift this morning.

I've always wanted one, but Karen has nixed it because they are loud. Turns out the females aren't loud and surprise, surprise, Matt and Heather gave us a Peacock! (technically a Pea Hen)

Karen named her Pippi Longstocking because she is reading a book set in Sweden.

Matt said that at his house all the chickens picked on Pippi. He left her wings unclipped so she could fly out of the chicken run. We did leave her wings unclipped so she can go where she wants to, but at our house, Pippi seems to be in control of the chickens!

T minus 7 days

The weekends before a huge party are an excellent time to start large projects that you've been thinking about doing for over a year, right? right??

We've been wanting to move these huge planter boxes forEVAH. They are lovely, but we can't sit and watch the kids in the pool from the cool comfort of the shady lanai because of them.
Finally on Friday, Tyson and the gang came over to move them. Here they are, that am.
After they've gone. Everything seems SO much more open! But we can't leave it like that. Kids could purl off of the edge
GB and I spent 3 hours at Home Depot shopping for planters to go there. We brought back a bunch of stuff. Here we're laying out some red pots and some whitish planters.
Stand back and look..... hmmmm.... not sure if we like this.

Fortunately we also had Lena there helping. She and GB were chatting about what to do and GB remembered that we have a TON of terra cotta pots that he brought back from Thailand.

Much Better!

Here it is.... almost done! We had bought way more plants than we needed. Looks great!
Cora helped too! She planted petunias in these planters that already have stuff in them

Voila!

Planters in their new locale.... waiting to be filled (that's a future project- there are humongous!)

And... our 1st Ruby Red Grapefruit!!! This tree was a gift from the Biermans for our housewarming, last October 2008. Young tree produced 5 grapefruit.

this one was juicy and ONO!

What's new

New stuff around the house!

Awesome bar GB found on craigslist. Here we are, breaking it in, on my birthday.


New pond. This is the 1st filling. It's leaking somewhere a bit. So we need to reseal it.More CONCRETE! Here, Eli and crew are working on steps to the chickens.

Beautiful sunrise

a few trees

For the purposes of record-keeping.
Yesterday I planted 3 trees I picked up at the school Country Fair. I was going to get one, but since I had the tree on hold, by the end of the day the trees were all $10.

I came home with a dwarf valencia orange, navel orange and soursop.

Planted all 3 yesterday.

the Teen clears hau

Ra'am has been clearing the hau on the hillside this summer (and beyond).

Here he is, way zoomed in- standing on a horizontal log, and whacking away.

See if you can spot him here, when I zoom out

The Flock Groweth

Egg production has been low this summer. Between molting birds, lunar or other phenomena, we've been getting only 3ish eggs a day. That sounds like a decent amount, but not when you've got 1 teen, 1 almost teen, 1 preschooler and 2 adults. And, mama likes to bake.

So I went out and got us some more hens. We got 6 new ones, to add to the 8. Here are our original ones (all except for one broody hen, who has not left her nest in what seems like an eon). The babes (2 month old) are in that dog crate. I kept them separate for some days, as I didn't want the older hens to peck them too badly. Being henpecked is a real thing.
Here are the chicks. They are a mix of rhode island red (dad) and rhode island white (mama)- those breeds are 2 completely separate ones, according to our book.

First taste of the outside worldThis lady took a field trip with me over to where GB was planting grass. She'd never seen grass.

Luka enjoyed the small birdsand Makalena (not so small)