Mele Kilikimaka

More Treats, Less Silly Hats.

Happy Holidays everyone! Oh, I'm on Facebook now too, friend me up if you find me!

our newest family member!

Everyone, meet Pono. He's a 1 1/2 year old male whippet. We are adopting him on September 22nd. He was rescued by a lovely family last year & they can no longer keep him. Lucky US ! We drove over to the other side of the island yesterday to meet sweet Pono & it was REALLY hard to not take him home with us right on the spot!

Pono was originally owned by a pig hunter (yes we have wild pigs here & folks hunt them all the time). Pono is afraid of gunshots (aren't we all?) so he failed miserably as a hungting dog. The hunter was going to kill him! Luckily Pono ran away & was found by a kind soul named Anne. Anne convinced the hunter to give Pono to her instead of killing him. Anne then found Pono a home with Tane & her family, where he is now. Sad, it's just like the 'perform or die' story of greyhounds and whippets from the racetrack. Sigh.

Pono's current family just inherited their father's dogs, bringing their pack up to 6 dogs! It's too much & they had to find a new home for Pono. Tane ( the current owner) was heartbroken & worried that she couldn't find a loving home for Pono. Then along came me! It's a fantastic match & Tane is very relieved that Pono's going to be loved to bits.

We only got to hang out with Pono for an hour and a half, but in that time we found out what a wonderful pup he is. He is friendly, outgoing, not spooky, not hyper, doesn't destroy his toys (aka chew things up), loves other dogs, very intelligent, responsive on leash...I can't really say enough good things about him. I'm so glad we can give him a loving (spoiled rotten) home!

'Pono' is Hawaiian for: just, fair, goodness, excellence, well being... in a nutshell "righteous living".

click on the photos for a larger view :) His 'pillow' is Pebbles, a chihuahua/jack russell mix. TOo cute, huh?

recap from the zoo

Well, the little mynah bird we rescued died when he was 2 days old. RIP nugget :(


However, we're taking these two face-breakingly-cute kittens in 6 weeks. Identical twins. Makes you drool they are so adorable.



We've got butterflies for DAYS. At least 4 hatch out each morning. At the height of the crazy we have 16 hatch in one morning.

Tired & off to bed. Will try to remember to blog about the uber garden tomorrow...so far 200+ starts covering 78+ varieties of veggies and grains. I'z a farmer!

making an offer

Booyah! We're making an offer on 2 acres tomorrow morning. Holy crap batman.

In the meantime, we already have the garden going - hydroponics style, with 47 different veggies or grains. We have 70+ plumeria cuttings, 30+ crown flower cuttings, a producing coffee tree, baby mango & 3 baby avocado . Now all we need is the land to plant it! Crossing the fingers!

Should be growing our own food, feeding the butterflies & making awesome leis within 6 months if this works out!

welcome Charlie!

There's a million things to blog about. I'm way behind & lots is going on. However, I'm going to throw in one quick post to welcome our Monarch Butterfly 'Charlie' into the world. He hatched out this morning...two days early little stinker!

Charlie is our first butterfly! His predecessors, Alpha and Bravo, both died in the pupae stage (Alpha fell & splatted, Bravo had a lethal parasite).

Delta and Echo are both pupating right now & should appear in 9 days if they don't have the dreaded parasite too.

Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Kilo, Juliet & Lima are still caterpillars & are munching away on Crown Flower leaves in the schwanky 'Butterfly Castle' we purchased.

We're raising monarchs quite by accident & totally loving it! We're going to turn our screened lanai into an indoor monarch house. Woo! Helping an endangered species is WAY FUN.

seattle

woo! I'm in Seattle with Steve. I must love him if I'm willing to be somewhere this COLD :)

Weather like this makes me appreciate Hawaii even more. It was 30 degrees when I landed. AAAAAGGHHHH!

Lava up close & personal

The lava finally came back down the hill last night. Pele's been hiding since July & we've been out for the past two weeks waiting for her to make an appearance. We heard she finally got down the hill to a walkable distance so we got our walking sticks, cameras, water & headed out. I was ready for a 4 hour hike like last year...this time it was 3 minutes! By the time we left the flow was only 25 feet from the spot where everyone parks!

Here's a starter set of photos:
Dat's a Rotsa Rava Reorge!

Yes, we are that close. Most of these are taken without zoom. We were only 8 feet from the lava most of the time. Luckily it moves slow & we stayed on the high spots. Gravity is your friend!

These movies and photos are hosted on my OWN site, so please just view them once & don't send the link around. I need to keep my bandwidth under the limit. If you know of free photo sites where I can host pics *and* movies, please let me know & I'll move em.

containerati + computer nerd0

Oh, did I mention the container arrived safe & sound? Folks keep asking, so I think I forgot to post it on the blog.

So yeah, it's here. It's been here for 6 weeks :) The mega-drama of everything going wrong is OVER. One the mainland, 'container' got to be a dirty word. Oddly, the moment it went on the boat, everything to do with the container has been effortless, inexpensive and all good. I take this as a another sign that I'm supposed to live in Hawaii.

It's been raining too much to cut into it. Besides, I have to unpack it first :) I did, however, get some schwanky metal roofing on the cheap last week & am going to throw a storage shed off the back of the container - thank god all my male pals over here are builders !

Old timey HighWire folks, this one's for you....
On a different note, I got a web job a few weeks ago, that actually has a lot of programming! The site's using Miva Merchant & it turns out that MM is written in SLP. I got to tweak templates & get my geek on. I was happy in ways that I'm embarrassed to admit.

rainy today, but still 85 degrees. no complaining here.

oh hot! hot! hot!

Well goodness me. After 5 weeks of rain the skies suddenly went BLUE, NO CLOUDS. It is freakin hot! Right now it is 92 degrees in the SHADE. Wah wah wah. I don't know if this is abnormal, but I don't care...alls I knows is that I got a sunburn on the 7th of freaking *january*. JANUARY.

Mom and Auntie Pam just left from my birthday visit. We had a mad, 4 day tour of the island. Quite an itinerary and I'm exhausted. I'm trying to convince my aunt that she needs to move here :)

Off to Hilo for errands.