It has been completely dry for a few weeks now. Many of the coffee trees’ leaves are drooping down. The trees near the house have a lot of blossoms on their way to becoming fruit. Such a shame they’ll be stumped. The landscape changes, too, when the trees are stumped. I’ll show this area again after the stumping.
Our ‘ulu (breadfruit) tree is looking good. We have a fruit. We had one last year, but at some point it was gone.
The Buddha’s Hand entry size tree (12″-18″) arrived from California in good condition. Because many of Four Winds Growers’ trees are grown in a greenhouse, their trees would be shocked to be directly placed in sunlight. They have to be acclimated to our environment and “hardened.” So it will be in this shady area in our courtyard for two weeks. It will get moved around a bit during that time to build up its direct sun tolerance. It’s similar to people. You have to build up your protective tan. You can’t just get off the plane and spend the whole day in the Hawaiian sunlight.
Acclimating plants isn’t a new concept for me. I am Bea’s daughter, after all. [Aside: Bea’s son and plants is another story. For him, as a joke we purchased Plant Life Support from a favorite store, the Kona Treehouse in Holualoa.] It’s super valuable to have a personal plant expert you can always consult.
Hubby and I are going to take a next step. We’ve decided to finally get the training to be Master Gardeners. I’m excited to learn more, to get tours of nearby special plant places, to network with plant experts, to be in a group where we’ll continually learn, and to hopefully give back to the community in a meaningful way. We have been on the receiving end when we emailed photos to the Master Gardeners to ask what was wrong with a few plants. We received prompt responses, and even got a correction to the first response. I think sometimes they have a newer Master Gardener answer, but a more experienced one checks answers later. It seems like they have a process to let newer members practice in a supported environment.
If you were a master gardener and received this photo and were asked, “What is this plant?” What would you answer?
On another topic, our visiting friend reacted to something she saw in the courtyard roof direction. I asked, “What??!!” Gecko. I told her, “That’s like saying, ‘squirrel!!’ in California.” But it was the first gecko she had seen in several days. I answered, “Oh. I hadn’t realized. You just have to look.” We found these, all different, in one minute. [Bea can’t stand reptiles. Mom, if you’re reading, the post ends here. Skip looking at the photos.] There’s a reason our cat hangs out under these Costus French Kiss plants.
