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...