When I get home from school, I often open the lanai door and the front door and let a cross-breeze blow through. Since I gave away the ficus, I now have an unobstructed view of the plumeria. It was such a beautiful sight, I had to take a picture.
I have been drinking Carnation breakfast drink for more than 25 years. I have recently been trying to find a way to make a replacement for it with erythritol. I wanted to stop drinking a giant glass of sugar first thing every morning. About a month ago, I did. I stopped drinking Carnation breakfast drink.
I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t suddenly exert superior will power. I didn’t make some Big Decision. I just stopped.
I had been drinking just a glass of milk in the mornings, but I wanted something more – something that didn’t take very long to make. I decided on hard boiled eggs. All I have to do is peel them. So far so good.
At the beginning of the covid panic, milk was one of the harder things to find. I certainly couldn’t get my usual two gallons per visit to the grocery store.
Now-a-days, it seems like they aren’t selling milk fast enough. Every time I go to the grocery store, I see discount stickers on the milk, because the expiration dates are fast approaching.
In the past, I might have shied away from milk close to its expiration date, because I’ve had bad experiences with milk going sour even before the date. But I did a trail with one of these milks, and it was fine, so now I’m buying them all the time. I drink milk so fast, it’s gone by the expiration date anyway. Nice!
I decided I would get a very large pot for my new taro plant. The instructions for growing this plant say that the more room, water, and fertilizer you get for it, the bigger it will be. I’m going for all three.
My coworker Chloe had given me a plastic pot that looked like a barrel. If the holes in the bottom were sealed, it could be a giant water saucer, and I could get a big plastic pot (which I got for super cheap at a landscape supply store in Kahului) inside it.
I used silicone sealant to do the job:
I had to wait 48 hours before getting the silicone wet. Last night was the mark, so I potted the plant and set it in place. Yay! Now it has lots of room, will be constantly wet, and has super rich potting mix to grow in. I’m so excited to see what happens!
I haven’t said this, but the Latin name for taro plants is colocasia. In the midwest, people call these Elephant Ear Plants. I’ve tried to grow them before. It’s hard to do in a temperate climate. Many people are very successful though. I never was. Now that the deck is stacked in my favor, I’m hoping for some good results!
The other day when my friend from church, Cheryl, was talking with me about having some trees for me, we talked about lei-making. She told me you could make a lei with the seed pods of the white lead tree. I was excited to hear that, because white lead trees grow like weeds in Maui, and I think they’re ugly. If I can think of them as useful, that’ll make me like them more.
Yesterday when I came back out of my classroom to go home, there were lei ingredients on my windshield. Cool!
You roll the green seed pods, which are very flexible, then stick a toothpick through them. Once they’re brown and dry, you take out the toothpicks and thread a string through the toothpick holes.
She showed me a completed one that day we talked, and not only was it beautiful, it made a pleasant noise when the seeds rattled in the dried pods!
on Albus “Abraham” DumbledoreMiriam, that's interesting. I hadn't made the connection before, but...
That looks very inviting! I also like how your shoe tree and chair make a very inviting entry. So peaceful…….