It's All About The Water Somedays

One day of being surrounded by visions of water and light.

From the ocean to the clear skies of a January Morning on Maui. The beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. To see the subject or the whole picture is a choice we make each and every moment.

Just watering the garden and the mist from a leaking hose can provide visions beyond my own imagination.

The amazing magnification of life on a microscopic scale.

Looking closely will reveal the image of the West Maui Mountains. Reaching five thousand feet into the sky and tens of miles wide, a few miles from a water droplet, and yet it's image can be seen almost fully within this droplet that itself is less than an eighth of on inch wide.

Keeping our eyes and minds open to allow the light to ferry the sight to our hearts and soul through being in the present.

 

An Appreciation for Soil

An often over-looked and under appreciated commodity is soil.  We think that anything under our feet is dirt or soil. How ignorant we can all be about the basics things in life.  I never thought much about the difference between dirt and soil, but now that I live in Kahului's predominately sand "soils", I find that the precious few spots that I actually either have real living soil that consists of organic matter and various forms of life, and the soil that I have had to grow,  there is a big difference.

The difference shows up big time when the plants go in. Some handle the sand, but being devoid of life and the inability to hold water is what sets sand and real soil apart.

Things like grapes, I never thought of growing in a place like Kahului and yet they do and give off fruit. Plants are amazing life forms.

My First Farming Experiences.

Thinking back to grade school. I remember my first experiences with growing anything, were experiments that involved comparing how seeds sprouted and grew in different types of soils.

Being a kid, it was fun to watch, but hard to wait. I usually lost interest when the report writing began.

Years later, growing up in Haiku, gardening in the Old Haiku School garden was mandatory. We worked in the gardens each day. Maybe because of our age, the lack of relative motivation or a sense that growing our own food was important, we seemed to spend the time goofing around and glad to be outside, instead of the classroom.

I did learn to eat Watercress that our cafeteria manager bought from a farm below the school and made so good that we all seemed to like it. Eating the food that was prepared and doing our time in the cafeteria kitchen had it's advantages. Mrs. Suzuki, who could be pretty strict, liked that I ate my food and worked hard in my shift, this resulted in a stop by the cafeteria on the way home to pick up a supply of cookies or what ever the left-over desert of the day was. It sure made the walk home nicer.

Now 40 years after leaving Haiku School and it's garden ceasing to exist, at least in it's original location, I was proud and honored to be able to help Haiku School build it's new school garden with the help of my grandson Jordan, and later plant it with Jordan and my granddaughter Makayla.