Blog — Hawaiian style

Wow. January blew by!  I try to post something once a month but just realized it's already February!  So... Happy New Year and Kung Hei Fat Choi Happy Year of the Water Tiger 2022. Hope you and yours had a peaceful and pleasant holiday season. I haven't made any resolutions as mine tend to be forgotten by March. It's sometimes difficult deciding whether I should pull weeds or clean/process lauhala. The weather often decides for me. Although winter is our dry season, we thankfully still get occasional rain. Just not every day like in the summer. Wet soil after a good rain...

I stopped by Kimura's Lauhala Shop the other day to pick up our coffee. Yes, I buy our coffee from a lauhala store. We drink 100% Kona Coffee. It may be considered premium coffee, but it tastes great "black" and we love supporting local agriculture. Also, the natural caffeine levels in fresher coffee makes it more cost effective and convenient, IMHO, as one doesn't have to drink as much to get the same wake up kick in the morning. Kimura's prices are very reasonable. The coffee doesn't travel far from farm to roaster to their store. I digress... Stopped by for...

Māʻona Community Garden does a community imu three times a year: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Reservations for turkey spaces are made online. One drops off their turkey in a covered roasting pan the afternoon before the holiday; Māʻona handles all the imu prep and loading and unloading; then the kālua turkeys are ready for pick up the next morning. All they ask for is a donation. I had seen flyers and announcements in the past but never considered it until talking to Chantal while at the garden this year. One of the things we talked about was the amount of single...

Today I went to Māʻona Community Garden after about a month hiatus. I was delayed by road resurfacing and loading perforated cardboard so instead of the usual two hours, today I had 45 minutes to work on the puhala.  In the following pictures one can see the "before" and "45 minutes after" of the puhala I worked on today.  I will chip away at it until it's cleaned and has good ventilation around it. The blue arrow points to barely visible hala leaves. The next picture is 45 minutes later in the same area. As I was leaving, I heard a...

 Day 1 For the month of October, artists/sketchers draw with ink and share it in their social media. There are Inktober Rules & Prompts, but one can use their own prompts or themes. This is my first time participating in #InkTober. I was inspired by Seattle Urban Sketcher "Fueled By Clouds & Coffee" Tina Koyama. After reading her blogs and going down the rabbit hole of sketching with fountain pens, I bought my first fude nib fountain pen. An inexpensive Jinhao pink shark. After finding that I enjoyed sketching with a fude nib, I invested in a better quality Franklin-Christoph 02 (F-C...