microb's blog: Happy Days

Wednesday was the Friends of the Zoo board meeting. I'm the only guy and only plant person on the board so I wave my flag for the zoo gardens. Lots of landscaping has to be done after construction and one the projects is replanting 19 5ft x 1ft planters located in a few locations around the zoo.
We had a discussion about needing to add some new plants and for easy maintenance we decided on Bromeliads. Approval was given to spend up to $500. (More on that later). We also decided to have a second fundraising plant sale in October so that is another ball in my court. This time I have a team of three to help. I did basically everything for the last sale held May lst. My primary job is to line up vendors.
After the board meeting I went to the nursery with the Pine trees and purchased a Sugi Pine, cypressus "Ice Blue" and a sequoia or Coast redwood. Should be fun seeing those grow over the next couple of years.
I had a few minutes to spare in town before the board meeting so went to the local nursery store and purchased a variegated papyrus, a small ginger and a variegated philodrendrum for the shady glen garden.

Today I had an appointment with Bromeliads Hawaii. They are a world distributor of hybrid bromeliads and run a nursery with acres of covered benches (check them out on line) Visits are by appointment only so when I got there I was the only visitor and met Mr Shiigi and his daughter Royanne. Really nice folks.Got to see acres of bromeliads and talk story for a while. They will be emailing me a proposal for buying about 75 bromeliads for the zoo. In keeping with local aloha spirit they gave me two wonderful bromeliads for my yard just for visiting.

This afternoon i was out in the forest with the chainsaw clearing trees to make way for the pine trees. Result will be a large wood pile off to one side.

Running bamboo is getting aggressive. Number of "kills" now at 519. Clumping bamboo Alfonse Karr has started to put out new canes Still waiting for most of the clumpers to wake up.

Six pots of Canna Lilies have had a spring awakening. Nice orange and yellow blooms. I'm going to put them in the ground this year. Trying to reduce by plants in pots. The remaining hybiscus plants went from pots to the ground this week.

While visiting Home Depot last Monday to buy wood screws I passed through their garden dept and picked up a wonderful Fuschia that has a "black" center. I was going to try and take cuttings but decided to just repot it into a hanging pot and put it out on a tree in the shady glen garden. Four different varieties of fuschia bloom out there now.

I was given the responsibility by the zoo of growing "Jean Curtis" vireya cuttings (tropical rhodedendrums). Jean Curtis was a past member of Friends of the Zoo and has a memorial garden. Two cutting have rooted and will go to the zoo next week.

We had two large white Tilapia fish die recently. Probably 11 years old and each weighed about 2 pounds. Will have to think about replacements but we still have a few left.

Water lilies are either in bloom or showing buds.

We have a red passion vine growing below the front deck railing so this year we let it climb up to the railing and have now trained it along the length of the deck (like a Lei). Always has nice red blooms and makes a good hiding place for green geckos. (maybe photos next time)

Hawaiian tree ferns are an asset in the garden. Really majestic with their large fronds. However each year one set dies off an fresh ones appear. The dead ones turn an ugly brown and lower themselves to the ground blocking pathways. These fern frond are like 6 ft long and 2 feet wide and with dozens of ferns throughout the forest cleaning them up once a year is hard work for someone my age?
The other obstacle in the yard is palm leaves. We have giant palm trees with palm fronds that weight 50 lbs and about 25 ft long that come crashing down from heights of 40 ft. Stay out of the way of those guys. Once on the ground they have to hauled to the rubbish heap. Palm leaves waving in the wind on Waikiki beach look magical but try cleaning up after them. Ours are not coconut palms so no nuts on the trees just the one cleaning up.

Well thats if for this evening. I think I'm up to date with gardening activities. Please note no oinons, carrots, irises or day lilies like a read in most the the blogs, just rampant tropical jungle fun.

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