seeds

Things grow in Hawaii. The timetable for growth is different than on the mainland. The scale is also different. Let me elaborate...

There aren't really planting seasons here. We had a tomato plant for a year growing at the side of the house. It also reached around another side of the house, spanning the distance between a lanai door and a garage door forty feet away. It was a cherry tomato plant, and a climber. It climbed into the jalousy windows, throughout the shoe rack, tried to ride David's bicycle, and took over the area along the walk. The kids were constantly trying to fight back the thing just to use the sidewalk along the house to get in. And Oh, the Tomatoes!

Eventually, the beast had to be removed. It was too lanky, too awkward to retain. The house needed to be uncovered.

Two volunteer tomato plants came up later. One is already producing and showing early signs of spread. I really should prune it. But Oh, the Tomatoes!

In Hawaii, scheffelera plants grow to the height of old oak trees. Poinsettas cover hillsides. Palms spring up like weeds. One mexican fan palm volunteered itself outside our front wall. I thought that was a beautiful addition, until it became a threat to the wall and sidewalk access. A neighbor apparently allowed one such palm to grow on her sidewalk strip, later having to cut it down since it was shoving away a streetlight. The trunk was 24" wide in six month's growing time.

Fenceposts grow grasses. Our rain gutter regularly sprouts. The stop sign at Border's book store is topped with a vine of bouganvilla that grew up through it's metal post.

This is all magic for me, a self-professed brown thumb. The first tomato plant was a survivor of a gardening fit that overtook me with peppers, squash, cucumbers, and the said tomatoes. I managed to kill all the others, but the tomato made it.

I've also tried to kill some plants here without success. Weeds are obvious offenders. In Hawaii, impatiens are considered almost a weed, springing up wherever they want. The nurseries still sell them in pots, though. We have a ficus tree that is taking over the back fence and rock wall. I cut it to a stub and poured roundup all over the remains. It was a tree again in a few months. My neighbor says I have to drill the trunk and pour salt into the holes to get the thing to stop rooting into the rock wall.

Today in Lowe's I passed the seed aisle. It's Spring somewhere, after all, and in a place of eternal Spring we participate in the seasons as if also ruled by them. I bought a tray for sprouting and an assortment of seeds for herbs. My plan is to attempt the sprouting in the controlled environment of the tray with only some of the seeds from each packet. If (when?) that fails, I will sprinkle the seeds on the ground where they might grow, still saving some. If that fails, I will give the rest to David and ask him to put them in the ground somewhere hidden from my care.

In my fifteen years of ranching in New Mexico, I have attempted gardening each year, a million times each summer. Every once in a while I got to eat something from my labors. Most the time, I just had to burn the field and start over. The tomato plant success has me hooked. If I manage to grow the herbs, I may just try again on some more foods.

Did I mention that I planted a banana tree and we have the fruit ripening on our lanai window ledge? I also planted a fig tree, ate two figs from it in two years, and watched an entire crop fall off this year. Friends say that I need to prune the fig severely. Oy! It dropped all its leaves once already, causing me to think I'd done it again, but glory be, it grew some more leaves. Why would I cut it?!

How amazing a packet of seeds is to me. For a dollar and some I have purchased a little pocket of tomorrows, of pure potential, of food and flavor and the most common sort of magic: growing things.

Cane Spiders

Cane spiders. I used to photograph them, wondrous creatures of epic size, out on the lanai of a home we rented on a visit to the islands. Ah, the wonder, Oh, how exotic. I never dreamed I’d be living amongst them. Part of the aftershock of moving to Hawaii and the “I can’t believe we actually live here.” is the next step in recovering a sense of reality, “I can’t believe that people have been living with these things. How do they do it?”

When a cane spider is in the house, you know it by the elastic cord that connected a ceiling light fixture with a chair, and now with you. When the cane spiders move into your garden, you are restricted from certain areas by a force field that only a machete can really clear. Otherwise, you’re in for a vertical trampoline experience that certainly includes residual threads dangling from your hair.

I’ve wondered if I could stop using hair styling products and simply get all my locks into place, then back into a web to hold everything in place for the day. It would probably be a great hair net, if it didn’t remove my hair when I tried to go on to work. There would also be the problem of gathering other items in the hair web during the day, like dust, food particles, small children, and electric scooters. I wonder how the webs would work on the end of a swiffer. It would probably pick up the furniture to move it so you could dust.

I’m all for trying to live amiably with my neighbors, whether human or otherwise. They may not, however, move in with us. When a website springs up in the house, I search out the culprit. Then I tell my husband where it is. We used to try to shoo them outside to their domain. That’s like trying to put electricity back into the socket. Now, he goes in with a magazine or a novel to smash the beast. Slamming noises are followed by a silence. If he comes out without the literature and I still hear smashing noises, it means the spider has the tome.

By now you know how to find my house. It’s the one with what looks at first glance like laundry strung about at random, but turns out to be a collection of webs that are full with hair, swiffer covers, the head off of a weedeater, outdated magazines, a toilet brush, and butterflied paperback novels.