Adventures!

I love adventures.  Don't you?

Next week, Harmony, I get to come see you.  Last time I saw you, you were just starting to talk in a language I could understand.  Since I am not around you all the time, I had to listen closely. This time, your language will be more fluent.  I will get it better.  And we will have adventures.

Today I had an adventure.  After the post office, I drove a little bit further down the coast.  Yesterday it rained a lot, and today the air is all washed clean and really nice to be in.  I took the very first left turn I could, down towards the ocean.

This part of Hawaii is steep, with gulches and the roads curve a lot.  There are no beaches near by where you can go swim, and no resorts, so not so many people.  I stopped here and wandered about.

There was a house and then below it all this grass and where the edge of grass and land is, that is the edge of the world.  It drops off in a sheer cliff so when you walk really close to the edge and look over, it can make you dizzy, it is so far down.  So I looked down, and walked back away from the edge, and then over to another spot, and kept doing that because I could hear the sounds of a waterfall.

There are ironwood trees that grow like spindly weeds up the sides of the cliffs.  Cliffs are called pali in Hawaii.  There was tall grass, like you can see on the edges of this picture.  That grass grew along the edge of the pali, so you could not tell where it was safe to put your feet.  The grass holds on in places a person would slip down and down.

I found the waterfall, and discovered you could only see it if you stood all the way close to the very edge, or walked down a narrow path with slippery leaves on it.  Since the leaves were still wet from rain, I stayed on the top edge.  It was a pretty and wide waterfall, but you would not be able to see it from any house you could build there, only hear it.

This tiki stands on a wall of what was once a structure of some kind that has gone back into the ground.  Once there was a great tsunami here.  Perhaps the wave climbed all the way up the pali and took the house when it went back into the ocean.  There are many broken walls there.  It is so far up from the ocean it is hard to imagine a wave so high, but they do come.  Something happened here.  It makes me wonder if the tikis were placed here to watch over the land make sure it stays safe from now on.

It's pretty, isn't it.

Harmony's First Visit to the Big Island

Aloha Harmony Rose ~  Here you are on the Honomu road tasting fresh coconut juice.  The little shoes you are wearing were your mama's.  That's your good buddy Amanda Jane in the photo with you and your mom.

What a treat to get to see you at eight months.  You are interested in everything.  On this particular adventure, we went to Honomu to see Akaka Falls.  That may have been the first time you ever saw a waterfall.  And it is a spectacular one!  There is a path through jungle we take to get to it, through giant bamboo and large stands of heliconia.

Your first night on the island you got to spend at the treehouse.  

If it looks like you are dressed warmly for Hawaii, that is because it's chilly on top of the volcano sometimes.  Often, actually, but not right now.  Today is bright, sunny, and very warm.  

Here you are in the grotto at the treehouse, reaching for an orchid flower that smells like chocolate.  The ginger flowers in the front at Volcano ginger, and they smell wonderful.  Also in the photo is a bromeliad and blue ginger that is not in bloom.

You, your mama, and Amanda Jane are all together in the hammock in the treehouse grotto, enjoying a quiet rest surrounded by sweet smelling flowers and the sounds of the forest birds.  There are honeycreepers flitting about above you, sipping nectar from the lehua flowers.

Kolekole Beach has a rope swing over a stream that flows into the ocean.  While your mama and Amanda Jane swam and dangled out and into the water from the rope swing, cousin Carl played with you while I took some photos.  Standing up is your idea.  You like to stand and jump, and that gets you all worked up and then you want your mama.

Back at the treehouse, here you are sitting on your mama's lap.

Between now and when I see you again in December, I'll be back from time to time.  For now, these are some of my favorite pictures of you in Hawaii.  I have some others that might show up here again before you come back

much love, much aloha to Harmony Rose...

For When I Get to Be With Her

Come sweet child
Let’s go visit tomorrow
We’ll put on yellow dresses
so we blend with the sun

We’ll bring along the dog that laughs
a loaf of bread and a jar of jelly
made with berries that grow in the lake
that is why they are blue

I see you have made me a necklace
so cleverly you tied together the grass leaves
it is like iridescent green pearls
with cat eyes so we can see in the dark

You can sing me your favorite song
we will hum along on the chorus
tie fairy wings over our jackets
glow like purple dragon flies

as we soar over rooftops
white horsey fences and red doored barns
until we tumble down the haystacks
and melt smooth flat chocolate tiles

between crisp crackers and gooey marshmallows
we will tell stories by firelight
until the grownups send us to bed
where we will whisper until sleep runs away with us


much love and aloha to Harmony  *  *   *    *     *    Soon,  sweet child...

Today in the garden

This morning the puppies wanted to go out extra early - it wasn't quite 6 yet. They kept pushing their noses against me so I gave in and left the cozy bed.

I like to walk up the path to the pavilion in the morning, just to see if there is anything new. This morning, I was thinking of you, Harmony. I was musing about how you are so far away, and what life would be like if you were nearby. I didn't get very far, as thinking about what is not only lets me know what I would like different. It doesn't bring what is far away any closer.

There at the top of the path, just at the entrance to the pavilion, was this new and different ginger. See how stripy its leaves are? All of the rest of the ginger here, even the fancy fireworks ginger or tourbillon as I call it, have plain leaves. Here is this baby ginger sprout, different from all the rest. I thought, how appropriate to Harmony. A new and exciting baby plant!

I came back in after both dogs had been out, and looked up striped ginger on the internet. It is also called variegated ginger. The first photos and articles I found did not have pictures of any flowers, and I wondered if perhaps the flowers were rare, or perhaps not worthy of being photographed.

When I found the photos of the flowers, imagine my surprise to find it is a kind of shell ginger, the very flower that is the symbol of our work here at mahinui na lani. The shell ginger is carved onto the gate out front.

Here is the story of how we chose shell ginger. We were living back on the mainland, and had just purchased the house we called hale mahinui. I wanted an image to use on our brochures and for stickers for inside the books, so people would know right away the book belonged with the house. I chose shell ginger because it was so unique. I had never seen that flower before.

Later, much later really, we came to visit the house, and there in the front by the garage was a huge stand of shell ginger in bloom! I was so very surprised. It is not the variegated kind though.

It is interesting to me that shell ginger should persist in this way to show itself around and about our home and work here. It is as if nature is answering a deep sense, an acknowledgment of the spiritual aspect of our home here.

It turns out shell ginger has many properties. The leaves and flowers are high in antioxidants, and are used in teas. The other gingers that grow here are not good for eating. It seems it will be about two years before this new plant is ready to flower.

Aloha from Volcano!

Aloha Harmony

Here is the moongate to the treehouse. One day soon you will be carried through this gate, and then another day you will walk through it.

I often think of the treehouse as Harmony's treehouse. In future days I hope you will spend happy hours, exciting days, and lovely nights here, dreaming your special dreams and inventing your life.

The treehouse is a house of dreams. It came about from many day dreams about someday building a treehouse. The dream was so strong and powerful that one day when tutu kane Robert and I had what seemed like a pile of money, we went ahead and did it. We had already found a bit of land full of trees and other rainforest plants and songbirds, and made it our own.

We found a professional treehouse builder, so the house would be safe up in the trees. Tutu Kane and Roderick the builder pushed their way through the ginger plants and uluhe ferns climbing up the ohia trees and making the jungle so thick you could not see through it. They came upon a great bulge in the ground, with ginger growing all over it, and uluhe curls unfurling in long strands making a tangle of vines.

After they had cut through the jungle, they saw the bulge was a fat bubble of lava almost twenty feet high that had burst and collapsed. Where the bubble had fallen in on itself there was a secret path up the back side. They could both see it clearly in their imaginations: a secret house in the sacred forest, over a lava tube, with a secret back way in.

Tutu Kane drew a design for the secret back door, and designer Roderick climbed into the trees to work on his vision.

That was the beginning of the treehouse.