Hey Portlanders! If you've ever been interested in building a rain garden on your property, now's your chance!
There will be a free Rain Gardens 101 workshop on December 1st. I took this class last year and it was excellent. They give you all the tools to plan and build your rain garden and the presenters are great.
My friends have a phenomenon we call "hippie trump." You know when you go to a barbecue and someone asks if there are veggie burgers and you're like, "Yeah, I picked up some from Whole Foods," and then someone else is like, "You know, their oats aren't locally sourced. I made some from scratch. They have bulgar wheat and organic mushrooms," and then someone else is like, "Oh, that's cute. I brought homemade ketchup that I made from tomatoes and onions I grew in my garden, using a bike-powered blender."
You've just been hippie trumped. And they probably spelled ketchup "catsup," the big jerks.
Rain gardens are the ultimate hippie trump. You do our rivers and streams a solid all winter long, the birds and butterflies love them, and when your native purist friends ask why you're growing agaves (BECAUSE THEY'RE AWESOME. GOD.) you can be like, "rain gardens, bitches."
I also think they're pretty and topography changes in the landscape only up the interest. And they are really fun to watch fill.
Super blurry because it was POURING.
Can you believe my castor bean plant was ever that small? Can you see it?
So I missed garden bloggers' bloom day, even though I still have things blooming in my garden. I have been incredibly distracted lately, flitting from one thing to the next.
I'm hosting Thanksgiving, so I'm in full-on house-crazy mode. A couple of years ago I decided to install a range hood and patch the hole in my kitchen ceiling right before Thanksgiving. Lately I've been obsessing over decor in the living room, as if anyone is going to notice any of that. People will notice whether the turkey was dry or if we ran out of wine.
If we're being honest, having enough wine means no one notices the turkey.
My brain tends to home in on one thing, as if THAT'S the reason I can't [fill in the achievement]. Of course I didn't get a raise! How could I when my living room mantel is such a mess? Thanksgiving will be a disaster if I don't repaint the front door! Nevermind that I haven't answered emails all week, many of them ABOUT THANKSGIVING, that door! That door.
That mantel.
Last weekend I didn't really feel like working in the garden but I had 200 bulbs to plant. So I got out there and it turned out to be one of my favorite types of day for gardening. It was cold and brisk but I could get by with just a sweatshirt. I planted crocuses, camassia in the rain garden, tulips and alliums in the lab, and daffodils under the coreopsis. I'm hoping the coreopsis will hide the dying foliage of the daffs but I'm skeptical of my placement.
I also moved and removed a lot of plants. My Phylica pubescens that I was so excited about? I killed it. I don't feel so bad since there was a vigorous conversation about this plant on Scott's Facebook page.
I hate that plant! It dies if you look at it wrong! You can't under-water it. But you also can't over-water it. Or it will die. That plant drinks all the milk and then puts the empty carton back in the fridge. Don't look at it, period. Or it will die. Phylica pubescens watches you while you sleep.
At least I'm in good company. I swapped it out for some of my cannas. I swapped those cannas out for some different cannas from the backyard. Clear as mud? Moving on!
I thought I ordered three New Zealand wind grasses last spring. I actually ordered three New Zealand sedges. They are fine sedges but they don't have the height and color I wanted for this area.
I moved two to the berm but I suspect I'll rip them out, come spring.
I'd write more but I need to sand that chemical burn out of the coffee table or Greg will never marry me. Happy Friday, happy bloom day!
While we were on Maui we visited the Kahanu Garden, a national tropical botanical garden. This garden focuses on endemic plants and the plants that Hawaiians have used for food and medicine. There aren't a lot of flowers here but it's still lovely. Foliage is the star.
The big draw with this garden is the Pi'ilanihale Heiau, a stone structure that covers three acres and took 128,000 man-days to build.
Not a lot is known about this structure but they do know that it was a religious site. You aren't allowed on it and the rocky area in the foreground is a burial site. The structure is massive. Greg, lucky duck, got to fly over it on his hang gliding tour. Can you see it, at about 10 o'clock?
There are many different types of bananas and taro everywhere.
It was considered bad luck to take bananas on fishing trips and, until the end of the taboo system in 1819, women weren't allowed to eat certain varieties. Too much delicious potassium?
We joked about seeing the Hawaiian national bird, the weed whacker. These were everywhere, all over the island. Hawaiians love their weed whackers.
I was so taken with the way they underplanted the alocasia with ferns. I want to replicate this in a galvanized container.
Ape/Elephant's ear (Alocasia macrorrhiza)
These screw pines are part of the largest remaining hala grove on the island.
Hala/Screw pine (Pandanus tectorius)
The bark is incredible.
There was a huge coconut grove with signs begging you not to walk beneath them.
According to our snorkel captain, more tourists are harmed each year by falling coconuts than sharks.
Loulu/Fan palm (Pritchardia affinis)
Lava rock raised beds
They had "the canoe garden" which included the species that Tahitians brought by canoe to the Hawaiian islands.
Feel free to ignore this post if you don't like looking at pictures of warm places when it's so cold out. We went to Maui! I've never eaten so much banana bread in my life!
We got up at 3am the first morning we were there to see the sunrise atop Haleakala. You can drive a paved road all the way to the top, which is way easier than seeing the sunrise from Mauna Kea on the big island of Hawaii. When we went up Mauna Kea in 2010 we had to rent a 4WD and drive miles of terrifying unpaved roads with steep dropoffs and no guardrails.
Haleakala October 2012
Because it's so easy to get to the top there were tons of people there. When the sun broke through some people exclaimed as though they weren't sure it was going to happen.
It reminded me of this commercial, which caused me to run around our whole vacation yelling, "Oh, it's so spiritual!"
It was nice but it wasn't as spectacular as Mauna Kea, which looked like this. We were pretty much alone when we visited Mauna Kea, too. Way better.
Mauna Kea October 2010
Good thing there were plenty of other pretty things to gawk over.
We visited the 'Iao Valley and the 'Iao Needle (the giant phallic rock) that was the site of an incredibly gruesome battle between King Kamehameha and the chief of Maui.
There were taro plants everywhere.
We visited the Korean Garden, which was a mishmash of tributes to the various emigrants that landed on the Hawaiian islands.
There were spaces for the Chinese . . .
New Englanders . . .
Portuguese . . .
Japanese . . .
We went to Lahaina and saw the single banyon tree that covers a huge park. It was gorgeous.
We attended the Old Lahaina Lu'au, where the food and dancing were spectacular.
We drove The Road to Hana. If we're being honest, I hate things like this, where you drive and stop every half mile to take photos of something scenic. I don't end up enjoying myself at all. But we stopped at the Kahanu Botanical Garden (pictures to follow in a separate post), which was peaceful and nearly empty.
We swam at the black sand beach at Wai'anapanapa.
We saw the red sand beach but I was wearing flip flops and couldn't get down to it. The iron in the lava is rusting, giving it this unreal color.
We went powered hang gliding in Hana. This was my birthday present to Greg and I still can't believe I did this. If any of you know me in real life or follow me on Twitter, I get absolutely shitfaced before getting on flights, using a combo of Xanax and vodka. I've gotten waaaaay better at flying over the years but I never look forward to it. I took half a Xanax for this little excursion. It took about 15 minutes up in the air to unclench and then I felt like I could stay up there forever.
The pilot is named Armin and he's wonderful. He showed me Oprah's property and Pat Benatar's house.
This is Greg flying over the road to Hana.
It's a stunning way to see the island and I can't recommend it enough. The funnest part is when he cuts the engine and you just glide. Then he starts diving and swooping and you can't stop screaming and laughing. We stayed overnight in Hana (which I highly recommend) and had dinner at one of two restaurants in town. We sat outside while rain poured down on the corrugated roof and locals performed at the open mic. Hana is wonderful, especially when all the tourbuses depart.
The next morning we got up and visited the Seven Sacred Pools at 'Ohe'o Gulch.
We hiked the Pipiwai Trail, into the bamboo forest, which is one of the coolest hikes I've ever done.
It gets surprisingly dark on the trail at points, the bamboo is so thick. It can get noisy with the shh-shh-shh of the leaves and the clack-clack-clack of the thick culms smacking against each other. It's AWESOME.
The trail ends at the 400 foot Waimoku Falls. We have so many waterfalls in Oregon that I'm rarely blown away by them, but this was very pretty.
Here's how it looked from the air.
Then our rental car started bucking and dying on our way out of town. We had planned to take the south road home from Hana, which is unpaved for five miles and mostly single-laned with blind turns. There are few towns along it. After restarting the car several times, only to have it die again, the car magically started (thank goodness, as there are no rental car agencies in Hana) and Greg said he still wanted to take the south road.
This was not my finest hour.
We bickered back and forth, with me pointing out that if the car died on the road, we'd lose power steering and power brakes, possibly while making a sharp turn, possibly plunging us into the ocean. If the car died we'd be in the middle of nowhere. Did I mention we had no cell service either? He still wanted to do it.
So I spent a few hours quietly seething. And worrying. He asked if I wanted to stop anywhere and I basically told him, I will leave you forever if you even think about stopping this car. We don't know that it will start again.
I hate Fords, guys. This shit happens to everyone I know with a Ford.
But the south road is beautiful and totally different than the north road, with its waterfalls and lush greenness. My friends Amy and Sloan wrote about it here. I can't recommend falling down the rabbit hole that is their travel blog enough. They are fantastic storytellers and they've been amazing places.
The road wasn't as scary as I feared it would be and it was totally doable without a 4WD car.
Despite all the worrying, I thought this drive was prettier than the north road to Hana.
We swapped out our rental car in Kihei and hopped in the ocean for a swim and I felt so much better. Swimming in the ocean is the best palate cleanser ever.
We went snorkeling at Molokini Crater, which has visibility of 150 feet or more. It was great, we even saw an octopus! I always refer to this fish as "the Blazers fish" because it looks like the Portland Trailblazers logo:
Right?
We drove around the NW top of the island, which was waaaaayyy dicier than either road to Hana. Unpaved one-lane roads, blind corners, very steep dropoffs and tricky maneuvers when you meet another car going the other direction. But it was so pretty! And there's a great art gallery on the road, as well as the best banana bread I've ever had.
Loree, is this Agave attentuata? It was everywhere and I loved it so much I failed to get a non-crappy photo!
We also laid on the beach and read two books apiece and swam and swam and swam. If you are what you eat, I was 40% pineapple, 20% dark rum, 10% ocean water, and 30% grilled meat during our stay.
