Blue

Early April I decided to correct the absolute lack of blue flowers in the garden.

Well that isnʻt entirely true. There were some struggling Hydrangea (possibly Hydrangea macrophylla) when I arrived, buried under begonias and not really thriving. I moved them to places where I hope I can minister to their nutritional needs, and bring a bit more sky down to the ground.

My end of the year holiday visitor late last year began that process, so I cannot even claim it was all my idea. I had told him that I did not think Hydrangeas thrived in a tropical rainforest climate zone. He said: "Maybe they just need to be somewhere different in this garden".

So I have redistributed them around the garden and am carefully nurturing at least one with coffee grounds and tea leaves, hoping to bring a bluer blush to the blooms

Then while I was on a blue roll,  I started acquiring the South African native Agapanthus, the flower of love (agape) according to the Greek roots of its name.

Also known as Lily of the Nile, or African Lily, I remember long curving borders of Agapanthus marking the end of the extensive gardens down by the tennis courts (which became vegetable gardens and hockey field) on the farm where I grew up. I would make ballerinas from individual flowers by sticking a twig through the top for arms. Fuschia flowers work even better.

I also remember my father warning against eating the plants as it was bella donna family and would dilate our pupils. Now why would he be discussing that with his hoard of daughters and is it even true? I cannot remember the context, just the warning and the information I seem to have retained that ancient Egyptian women used it to make themselves more beautiful.Thus are family legends nurtured, independent of internet. In mysterious synapses we call memory.

I wonder if that is at all connected to the fact that my response to attending my Motherʻs death by her own hand a few years ago, was to tattoo my eyelids so that, in effect, the lizards sewed my eyelids together for a mourning period. Park that path of investigation for now.

The extensive acres of that childhood garden on Seafield Farm had originally been laid out by a professional horticulturalist. This was before my parents became custodians of the place and long years before my birth.

 I was thus born into a professionally designed garden. To the manor born.

Looking at the tight fist of the bud on the specimen which I found pot bound and pleading for release in a local big box store, all this and more came back to me.

Heritage is everywhere. My very own book of laughter and forgetting. And remembering. Released by a bud.

I have subsequently acquired three more agapanthus plants.

Buying my weekly vegetables from my friendly neighbours at the Hapuʻu Garden down the road, I found I was standing next to a row of agapanthus, so two more pots came home with me.

Those are proving to be the African sky blue which I remember from my childhood. I am quite relieved as Mrs Hapuʻu Gardens could not remember if they were white or blue.

Though now that I think about it, I do need to add more white to my garden. White flowers really add a special element. I have white gardenias but they turn brown very rapidly with the amount of rain we get. And white anthuriums. But maybe white agapanthus....

The deep indigo Queen Victoria cultivar was an impulse purchase at the Coffee Mill Farmerʻs Market when I was returning from a hula demonstration in Volcanoes National Park one Saturday in mid April.

Queen Victoriaʻs flowers droop and hang down more demurely than the dancing lighter blue ones which seem to whirl and flip their skirts up.

Is this how one becomes a plant collector? Am I turning into one of those obsessive gardeners?

Signs of the times

Seen in the traffic on the way home recently.

Eye of newt and toe of frog

I turned my red kayak over and found some of my roomies.

Halau Na Kipuʻupuʻu

I was privileged to be present at a hula demonstration by Halau Na Kipuʻupuʻu at Volcanoes National Park this month.

Under the leadership of kumu hula Micah Kamohoaliʻi, this halau (traditional Hawaiian dance school) from the Kamuela area in Kohala, values the ancient traditions (kahiko) and is known for perpetuating a number of traditional crafts and arts associated with hula - amongst them the making of kapa cloth and dyes.

I saw incredible mastery of the crafts on display. The kapa cloth is all dyed with natural dyes from plants and minerals found on the island. The dog canines used in the Nihoʻilio - leg (and neck) ornamentation are genuine.

Something like 20 000 dog teeth were used to create these items for this halau. Thatʻs a lot of toothless old dogs out there! Traditionally, Hawaiians ate dog so dog teeth would have been more readily available. I have read that each generation would add a row to the leg device, which would be handed down in the family.

It seems that the heritage breed of food dog which the original Hawaiians brought with them on the canoes might have become extinct now. Still I wonder where they DID this halau get those teeth from? They look far too shiny and white to be ancient family heirlooms, though I have no doubt that they are genuine dog teeth. China? Hmmmm. Eating dogs is still practised in many Asian countries.

The halau also does not generally enter competitions. As their kumu, Micah Kamohoaliʻi, said: "We dance out in the forest, for the kupuna and aumakua" - the elders and ancestors.

 There is an incredible energy and power combined with grace in their performance. Ikaika - strength - is the word that comes to mind. Warriors on all levels, both men and women.

We were warned ahead of time that this halau has a reputation for bringing on downpours with certain oli (chants) and dances. Well, it did pour with rain during the performance. Luckily I go to these outdoor events prepared for all weathers. This is Hawaii, after all: a mercurial young environment as changeable and moody as the youth that it is.

Halau Na Kipuʻupuʻu are preparing for a hula drama which will tour the islands and eventually play in Carnegie Hall in New York City.

I have a ticket for the single performance in Hiloʻs Palace theatre. I am looking forward to that hugely and really grateful that I got to see them first in Peleʻs home, out in the open, on the edge of the Kilauea crater at Haleumauma.

This is genuine hula harkening back to ancient lineages and traditions, as it originally would have been performed, before the western world and Hollywood discovered the romance of the South Seas and put the traditions to work in the entertainment industry as pittance-paid extras swaying in grass skirts and coconut bras.

(More pics in a flickr album)

Sulphur banks: breathing into creation with Pele

In Volcanoes National Park for a hula performance, I found I had some time to spare so I took a slow, contemplative walk to the sulphur banks.

It was early on a rainy Saturday morning. I was the only one about on the paths and trails.

The ferns gave themselves to me lush and fresh, unlooked at yet that day. I was the honoured first.

I admired offering after offering of spiral and fiddlehead: trembling crystal beads of rain adorned every unfurling, reaching out for life and growth. Emergence.

The vibrant green of new growth contrasted with the rich, red brown of old.

Ohia Lehua, goddess Peleʻs flower, is always blooming marvellous, it seems.

Alone at the sulphur banks I could truly submit, bask in and appreciate the mystery of the strange landscape. Pockets of yellow sulphur crystals formed in vivid smoking caves.

The the earth here breathes sulphurous fumes, belching up from cracks and crevasses, manufacturing herself candidly,.

In this park which receives thousands of visitors by the busload daily, on this morning I was the grateful recipient the unexpected gift of this solitary face-time with the mystery and beauty of such young earth, so close to the fiery heart of it all. How often do we come this close to elemental origins?

Finding the back forty. Again. Blood Orchid revisited.

I have been a bit neglectful and distracted. The back section of the garden had transformed into a wild jungle again.

It doesnʻt take much in this climate. A tall lanky elephant grass type grass with razor edges to the blades,  and several kinds of creeper are robust volunteers in the biomass creation department. It doesnʻt help that the little red fire ants also like to hang out in this neighbourhood.

I hired some muscle with machines and florescent green shirts to help me restrain the grass and creepers and to find and define my back boundaries once more. The hired muscle and power tools were expensive - must have been the cost of the logo on the shirts.

I am resolved not to use this company, which I found on craigslist, again. I was disappointed, as what I had negotiated with the luna (manager), ie: clearing down to lava rock,  did not happen when he dropped his hired muscle, and went off to spray poison on another 2 acres somewhere else in the neighbourhood.

This time I am (kinda) resolved to keep it under control myself. It is ridiculously expensive to hire muscle every few months, especially ones who spend half the day lying on their back smoking weed.

Having seen what they did with their weed wackers, however, I am thinking about getting one of those noisy machines myself. Ah! the insidious creep of more stuff - especially power tools. Not my favourite thing.

The noise and hullabaloo in the garden offended a normally green and peaceful lizard to such an extent that he turned brown and crabby. Well, to tell the truth, it could have been the cold wind off the snow on Mauna Kea, or another of his own species arousing him in either the territorial or reproductive imperative which made him this way.

The glossy little black lizards were also out in full force, greatly disturbed by the rearrangement of their territory.

It was a day of discoveries. My fig, planted from a cutting last year, has produced little figlets all up and down the new vigorous shoot.

My African Tulip tree (Spathodea Campanulata) aka variously as African Flame Tree or Flame of the Forest, uncovered from creepers last clearing of the back forty, and mentioned first here, where it is pictured still covered in the smothering creeper, rewarded me for liberation with flowers. Bright free-range-egg-yolk yellow flowers.

"Pretty!" I thought at first. Then I got to wondering about the yellow colour.

Researching this,  I discover that the yellow is a rare genetic mutation of the normally scarlet to orange red flower. Excitement! Are plant collectors now going to sneak around my backyard, stealing cuttings since this is the only way to propagate the yellow true? The gene is recessive so seeds are no guarantee that one will get yellow that way. Yes, I read the books, saw the movies. Orchid Thief in my own back yard! Blood Orchid on my mind.

Suddenly I am a whole lot more protective of my feature tree in the back forty. Until, doting on it from the upstairs loft windows, I notice that there are also yellow blooms on a tree in the neighbouring yard. Horticultural motherlode!

I am thinking that the parent tree, the big red one in the neighbourʻs backyard, must be a carrier of the recessive mutation. Amatuer geneticist that I am and all that, I stand open to correction at this point. There are several other saplings in a wide circle. Some of them are not flowering yet. I am watching them, eagle eyed.

I have subsequently located one other yellow on this section of the island, where the red has naturalized and is widely regarded as a bit of a pest tree. It is a way prettier pest than the Albezias, in my opinion.

Whatʻs not to love about a tree which has its origins in equatorial Africa, and which blooms a beautiful flame red (usually) with such flamboyance. Flame of the Forest naturalised in Peleʻs land. So appropriate. And I have gold!

Note: Spathodea campanulata is on the list of the worldʻs 100 most invasive trees.