Back to my roots: flora and fauna. I give you this week, One of Each.
FLORA
I don’t know what this pretty flower is, exactly. The vine grows on our kitchen chimney, and I’m always happy when it flowers. The only ODD thing is that the flowers smell like garlic. Raw cut garlic.
Austin’s away for coral work again, so I can’t pick his brain for details about it.
I just got the bright idea to use a plant identification app. First one I installed said “try free for 7 days” upon opening. I uninstalled it at once.
Found a different service. Plant.ID Always free! My kind of service!
So I got this photo analyzed by Plant.ID’s database.
The name of this plant is Mansoa alliacea.
Guess what its nickname is: garlicvine.
🙂
FAUNA
For some reason we had a tube light on my porch on in the late afternoon, and I was resting on the couch looking up at it.
Could not believe what I was seeing.
Getting this photo was Very Difficult … I hope you can tell what you are looking at.
These are three of at least eight geckos who were hanging out up there.
My fixture had been converted into the Tube Light Bar and Grill for my sticky-footed friends.
***
I am off this afternoon for a 3-day meeting in Suva. Looking forward to catching up with a lot of old friends.
Couldn’t stop thinking about Monica – and the memories went from happy ones to my biggest screw-ups. “Monica! Do you want me to do something?” I finally asked her. I couldn’t hear any reply, so I mentioned it to daughter Lua who said, “You need to write her stories!” That was it.
And that put me in the mind of writing to her little sister Conny. Turns out, Conny had just arrived on our island, and she wanted to come visit Keith! GREAT!
Conny brought her two boys, and they had a great time.
James (3) was fascinated by the wall of poultry.
He and Gaby (5) both loved the goose.
Conny and I got the whole little book of Mama Monica stories written, and celebrated by going to the waterfall, with her boys, and Junia, Keanu, Akka and Keith.
Conny’s husband arrived the next day and slaughtered us all at croquet. The dude used to play golf!
Keith and I were sad to see them go.
***
My “flora” for the week was the new fruit hanging from our Tea Bag tree
And my “fauna” was… I don’t know WHAT it was that I saw…. Moving, I think… up the hill from the road. I took a zoomed-in photo to try to figure out what it was. I have circled the mystery in orange.
So I turned my camera over to Keith – to get some photos with some stories to go with them.
He brought me BANANAS
I thought it was because one stalk is narrow and one is wide. But no, he brought it because when he was talking a walk they heard the bush fall, and the bananas were too green, so they left it for later, not even covered. Days later, walking with Conny’s husband – they noticed the bananas (on the right) were ready — not damaged !! And they also found the second stalk, ready to bring up. We are back in bananas, folks. Happy times !
(The report of bananas 3 weeks ago – that was our first stalk in many years, having lost ALL our bushes to “bunchy top” disease. I didn’t know then if it was an isolated case or the start of great bananas. Having bananas again is fantastic.)
The other photo Keith brought was this
What the heck? This is on OUR property? I thought the stripes in the back were window slats. …. Turns out it is tin. Turns out it is the side of MY house. Turns out that is our dead refrigerator. Turns out what Keith took the photo for is the plant in the foreground – de ni vuaka, that his mom told him that the roots could be used as a toothbrush.
***
And that was going to be all for this week, except Monica started haunting me AGAIN.
AGAIN! I wrote her blinking stories! Dang it! What does the girl want?
Keith and I went to Gungun’s birthday party that night at the temple. I had a little present, and was in a nice regular dress.
Well, it was a SARI occasion, and everyone took ENVELOPES of money for the birthday girl. OOPS.
Monica was just trying to keep me from embarrassing myself. Again.
Standing in line at the bank the other day, I was so excited to see a Micronesian skirt..
I finally caught the eye of the lady wearing it, I pointed to it. She smiled and said, “Chuukese” YES! Truly a Chuuk-conceived skirt. I still wear one of my two Chuukese skirts nearly every week. I had one on that day. We smiled.
Then she said that it’s actually Pohnpeian – yep, they adopted the style in Pohnpei. She herself is Fijian, but her husband is from Kosrae. Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae – those are the three island states from what used to be known as Eastern Caroline Islands. I was deeply pleased to have this connection to my old home territory.
***
Almost everything here is STILL all about that rain.
Rakesh and Eroni and Junia and maybe a few others were really working on improving the drainage. This also turned into road work on our driveway, which was the receptacle of a lot of dirt.
They put me to work driving back and forth over it with the truck.
***
My ankle is good, so I’m walking to the main road again.
This flower suddenly appeared after all the rain.
***
Just yesterday, I saw something new – a curved branch full of balls.
A closer look – it was a fern.
(Gotta say I’m really happy I learned to use “pro mode” on my phone camera. Finally getting some close-ups that work.)
***
I rarely write about homestay guests – they are nearly always wonderful because this place attracts the kind of folks who will enjoy it .
But somehow I really feel I need to mention this sweet lady.
She is the age of my kids, and I called her my yaca (YA-tha, namesake). For one, her name is Kym. And for the other, we had so many things in common it was crazy. She had been a farmstay owner in Uruguay – and had many of the same routines that we have. Where we have “happy circle,” she and her family had a “gratitude stick.” I get the ladies together for lunch the first Wednesday of each month; she gets her neighbors in Australia together for dinner once a week. We are both drawn to the same handicrafts. And while she was here, we both rekindled a love of calligraphy-style lettering and were practicing together.
She and her family, a husband and FIVE kids, were here for a WEEK. It was so rainy when they arrived – I felt sorry, but they were so flexible. The sun came out about the fourth day of their stay. That was perfect.
Two days after Kym’s family left, the mosquitoes matured and went into full attack mode.
***
We received another guest while Kym’s family was here – one of the volunteers for Austin’s project, who was driven to distraction by bedbugs where he was.
We brought him here with Maximum Precautions … and then he was OCD vigilant above and beyond our precautions. He is now resting easy – and we did not get any of the vermin.
But this did lead to a fun discussion.
Kym was saying how the word “bedbug” is not allowed on Air BnB at all, because the very word would KILL a business.
Junia said he thought we should rename our place and call it Bed, Bugs, and Beyond, which I thought was very funny. But Kym was not amused. The only time I saw her with a serious face. “If you name it that, you will never have any business. Ever.” ha ha ha
***
.While Kym’s family was here, Akka brought out the croquet set. Kiki got into it, and so he and Akka kept playing.
They got me to join.
I won! What a surprise.
Come here if you want to play croquet. The game isn’t going back on the shelf any time soon.
***
I don’t usually put in an appeal for Austin’s coral work – but today he is returning from eleven days in Kiribati, hunting though a 99.99% dead reef for any surviving corals.
Right now some amazing forward thinking kids have put out an appeal for the corals, and Global Giving is matching donations (by 50%) for all of April. If you want to give, now is a very good time.
And costas, known in the family as “chicken cabbage” (because the chickens ran to it first when given a choice of six different plants) that is beside our road. After the chicken event, Austin looked the flower up, found out they eat its stems in Vietnam, and now we eat because it tastes good, and you have to take a bank loan to buy veggies in the market right now.
What do I mean that you need a bank loan for veggies right now? Well, all the rain wrecked a lot of crops. A decent bundle of long beans went from $5 to FOURTEEN DOLLARS !!! Supply and demand and all that.
We have been living it up on costas, cactus pads, and moringa – those little leaves we fry with coconut, which all live near the house and which were not destroyed by the rain.
***
I got one more flower.
Shy little flower. Every flower on the bush was facing downward. I was standing looking at this bush thinking it might be a chili plant. Sure enough I found some green chillies, all pointing straight up (those photos failed. Oh well). Strange plant, huh, where the flowers point down and the fruits point up.
***
I finally went to visit and spend time with more Rakhee family – my brother Jeswant’s nephew and wife, living in his old house just down the hill from me.
They are VERY sweet, I’d taken some little presents for the girls, a knock-off Barbie for the older one. She was so thrilled. About 15 minutes of playing, she took off the ponytail holder, and was rubbing the hair back and forth. Started turning her “baby” into Weird Barbie – ha ha. Love it.
Anyway, I saw something NEW about farming when I walked into their house.
Why did they have a pile of dirt in their house?
On closer inspection, it was RICE.
Motu (my nephew) had been growing rice, and was able to harvest it just before the horrific rains. This is how his family is keeping the rice dry until it can be milled and put into sacks.
The embarrassing thing is that Motu must have been growing it in the field beside our road – and I must have been driving past this rice for a few months and totally clueless that rice was being grown.
***
Another big bug
Some big beetle native to Fiji, that draws blood if it gets you. I don’t know if the “getting you” is by bite or pinch. Austin showed up with blood running down his index finger. He was telling me to get a photo of the bug – I gave the phone to Keith. Ick. I’m not interested, but maybe some loyal readers are.
***
Now for the flora & fauna HIGHLIGHT of my week
Our own pickled ginger.
It is DELICIOUS!
It is just like true Japanese pickled ginger.
Austin sliced young ginger very thinly, and put it in a vinegar brine with a bit of sugar. It turned pink on its own. He packed jar full. I took this photo yesterday. This morning I noticed that there are only maybe five pieces left.
***
Happy week, everyone!
I’m planning a happy week, starting with Akka making more pickled ginger. 🙂
Akka, God bless him, provided some interesting Flora and Fauna for this blog.
We got bananas again, after a long time without.
And two of our three darling cats – the brother and sister – still take naps together.
***
For me, it was more of my walkabouts, that I fear will be boring to everyone else.
My eye caught a small flower on a bush that reminded me of tiny flowers I used to see in the grass.
The small flower in situ.
After a lot of effort, I finally got a clear close up.
at which point, I saw that it did not really look like the other flower at all: pinker, one extra petal and missing the whiskers. Oh well, it is still pretty.
But for some reason, I could not walk away from the bush. I just stared, trying to see why I couldn’t leave, and then I saw it.
A tiny spider on an invisible web, with a small yellow moth.
The weird thing was not being able to walk away.
***
I cleaned out some drawers under a bed, and found that a mouse or rat had been making a home in a blanket-throw with tassels.
This was a precious gift to Austin from his mom, and I could not believe how matted, tangled and chewed up those tassels were. I got it untangled. Ashmita washed it. I’ll repair it and store it better.
***
Another barefoot day out (I don’t take my shoes at all any more – just walk slowly over the gravel), I got fascinated by this.
One, I don’t understand this damage that is like writing on the surface only, and
Two, I don’t understand why that was the ONLY leaf on the bush that was damaged.
***
More with me and leaves. It was really a Leaf Week for me.
Beautiful little baby leaves.
I’ve been looking at a lot of infancy, youth, maturity and old age in leaves this week.
Yesterday, during a downpour I looked at the trees from my porch, and noticed that the small leaves on the bougainvillea were dancing in the rain, while the large leaves of the royal palm and cycad were just standing stoically. Maybe little folks just can’t help dancing.
***
And, it’s not done yet – but I wove another mat on the loom yesterday. Threading the loom was much easier. Weaving was not hard. Cinching up is going much better. I still need to finish the cinching and deal with the sides. But the interesting thing was the shrinkage from cinching.
Came off the loom at 40 inches. It is now 28 inches. That means it lost 30% of its length. (can we translate this to a diet, somhow? Oh, is that how Exercise works????)
Happy Spring Equinox, to friends in the Northern Hemisphere.
Happy Autumn Equinox, to the rest of us – where the daytime is still more than 12 hours long because we are in the fat half of the globe. Dr. Smarty Pants has been dwelling on this for the last week or two, mentioning that this is the reason the southern hemisphere has more water, i.e. ocean. (I still don’t understand it.)
***
Eroni sent me his photos of a rainbow.
Thing is – this photo is from March 1st – three weeks ago – and it was during a rainy period. that has not stopped yet !! Since then, we have been cut off from town by floods, spent one day without electricity, and Keith’s school is currently not open for the third or fourth day.
Yesterday afternoon at our little Naw Ruz (New Year) dinner, I asked my neighbors if their crops had been damaged from all the rain. “YES,” they said. “A lot of damage.”
“What do farmers do if there is a bad season?”
Lallee said they take their money from the bank. They put some in after a good harvest, and that is what they use through a bad season.
So I asked, “In order to be a farmer, you HAVE to be able to save?” Lallee and Sarojni nodded. Without saving, you cannot be a farmer. One bad season is not a problem. Two bad seasons is tough. Three bad seasons is a disaster. I did not ask them when the last good season was, but I hope to become more observant.
Junia noted that Sarojni’s husband is a very smart farmer because he has his land divided up into crops that do better in different weather conditions.
***
I’m still doing my daily little walkabouts. I have gotten bored with pretty things – found myself more interested in the decrepit ginger flower than the fresh pink one.
This day I was drawn to an “ugly spot” on the trunk of a mango tree.
What started as just a dark patch separated into green moss and pale green lichen, kind of visible in the photo above, and very dark green fuzz and yellowish stains to the right of this shot. There were also fast-moving ants and slow-moving “something-else”s. All very good for five minutes of entertainment while getting lightly rained on.
***
Another day, I went down to check on the orchid house.
Woe is me. I spent a whole day repairing that seam a few years ago. I need better knots.
bur all this overgrowth is from more than just the ceiling rip.
And below the orchid house – “cardiac hill” where I used to run for exercise.
Cardiac hill no more. Monica and Akka’s garden no more. It’s what I said a few months ago – trying to keep anything maintained here is a herculean task.
***
The only other photos in my phone this week are of my weaving.
I rethreaded the loom, correctly this time. The weaving came out even.
When I got it off the loom, it was a big hassle controlling the neighboring warp threads so that I could properly tie one set. When that was done – I had still loose cord ends sticking out on one side, and had to figure out what to do with them. Once the lightbulb flashed, it was so obvious: untie them, retie them with one piece on the Other Side of the selvage threads. Duh! Then I could cut them short.
Another step, which became quite a meditation was to PULL the warp threads to tighten them up. It just felt like the right thing to do. But about half way through, I remembered a dear soul from my home town, Ronnie Mosseller – a master craftsman rug maker. (One of his rugs is on display in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.) I once saw Ronnie cinching up a rug which was hanging high on a wall. He cinched from one corner to the other, putting in a temporary knot in each set of threads, and then went back for the final cinch with the permanent knot. That’s what I needed to do, but it was kind of too late this time. Ronnie was such a dear, dear soul – just thinking of him puts a glow in my heart.
Anyway, this is my little rug all complete.
Ended up just a little larger than a placemat. But now I know how to do it, and I shall weave again someday.
Non-stop rain. These clothes have been on the line on my porch for six days now.
At least they’re not getting mildew.
***
An innovation this week – in spite of the rain: FIVE MINUTE OBSERVATIONS
Each day I’m going walkabout, seeing what catches my eye, and then standing there barefoot and just watching. Taking photos in this space feels distracting, but I did get three photos.
First day out was this white flower bush that was crowded with insect life. I only got one photo with any critters (there are two insects in this photo), too bad. This bush had three different types of flies, including some really tiny ones, ants making trails, and more. It was like seeing a video of sea creatures on a reef.
Second day out was BEAUTIFUL bark on a guava tree. No photo.
Third day was delicate drops at the end of the needles of a casurina tree. I didn’t get a photo then, but went back on day 5 when it was rainier.
This is from Day 4. Can you guess what this is?
This is the bark-y trunk of a big nopal cactus – the kind that has the paddles that are edible. To me, it looks mostly like a normal tree, except it has the rings every foot or so.
Anyhow – I’m finding the practice very restful. Going barefoot, “earthing,” is supposed to be very healthful. And walking home barefoot, medieval style (toe first), seems to be helping my slow-to-recover twisted left ankle. Wins all around!
***
Cheapskate. I had a sheet I had mended and mended, and it was now a goner. So I turned it into potholders.
Early American thriftyl
AND
Akka put together the loom that was given to Monica. I thought I’d try making a rug with my cloth strips on it, even though the loom is made for yarn, not for fishing twine. The bigger problem was that I had never used a heddle loom before.
I got you-tube instructions. You need a warping peg for the vertical lines on the loom. I didn’t have warping peg..
. I tied a hammer to a chair and used that. You can imagine how well that’s going to go.
I finally got all the warp loaded. But there were crossed lines a the end, and some dropped loops that I tried tying with feedbag twine. Also the cloth strip was just too floopy (yes, floopy) for a rug. I was doing to have to make cord and use that instead.
By this point, I had reversed the inside stands so the loom was in the right direction, I had figured out that you have to wind things over the TOP of the roll bars, I had worked out how to use the shuttle. And I also decided that with the crossed threads, this particular piece was NEVER going to turn into a durable rug. So I took the weaving apart and will try again when I have figured out a better warping peg and I have enough cord made.
***
Our guests – young female volunteers for the coral project, here at the farm until their place on the coast was ready, were my cheerleaders through the early weaving stuff. One of them, Gauri, showed me embroidery she did. She recently learned and is decorating her t-shirts.
Beautiful, isn’t it! So tiny! So much work!
***
Look at my other blog today if you want to find out how come I’m going on walks and pulling out the loom.
Rakesh was so proud of the work he and Eroni have been doing on the pavilion that he insisted that I come up and take some photos.
Shiny!
***
We visited a neighbor recently who has ducks, but his ducks don’t have “glasses.” So I was thinking about our ducks as I wandered the yard yesterday, and saw this fellow by a rain tank.
***
Had to go back up to the pavilion to give a message to Akka. You’ll see the roof is uniformly clean now.
But that’s not why I took the picture. I’ll zoom in.
Gaggle of geese number one.
Gaggle of geese number two.
Google tells me that ” gaggle … technically only refers to geese on the ground.” So I’m right!
***
Ok, here is the CUTE picture you have all been waiting for. Keanu and Joyce were drinking colored juices. They were very interested to compare their tongues – Keanu from orange soda and Joyce’s from red.
I had nothing, so I gave the camera to Kiki yesterday. This is what he got, in order:
Pandanus plant
This is what is used to make woven mats in Fiji.
***
Masi plant
The bark of this is used for making Fijian plant cloth – “masi” or “tapa.”
***
His sister Joyce
who just arrived yesterday because we were going to have a party. (I don’t know why he chose to photograph her with food on her mouth)
***
Some polarized film
Akka was fixing Nicole’s laptops – getting the better parts of each together. This film was in one of them, and Keith had a great time looking at the twin-but-different images. He couldn’t quite get a photo showing the effect, and of the photos he took, I liked this one with the flash the best.
***
The cannibal pot, back at work.
With Vina using the oar
because we did have a bunch of folks–about 40 adults and kids–here yesterday afternoon. There was even a candy hunt. (too bad no photos of THAT… I think the photographer was occupied)
***
A self portrait
This was the best of Keith’s five efforts. He did this all by himself. I don’t know what settings he used, but somehow he also doubled the pixels on all the photos.
***
After giving me back the phone, he was suddenly spraying insect killer at the TV screen. Granddaddy was not happy–until he found out why. There was a mud dauber nest on the back of the TV. The two boys (young and old) got it down, and I gave the phone back to Keith.
The hole to the outside of the mud dauber nest.
The nest cracked open, showing the cells. Each cell has a larva and some food for it. The food might be a spider or a fly or something like that. You can see spider legs if you look closely.
A doomed grub.
***
SO ANYHOW – at the end of all this, I felt I needed to show that I accomplished something this week …. so I quickly got the binding on the quilt I finished.
This was a quick quilt to use up some very odd cloth my daughter gave me.
So simple.
But here is the cloth. Every critter has a mask on. Covid-19, never forget. What could I do with this? I finally decided on a quilt for that same daughter to use when she is sick (she is sick a lot). She loved the idea. I quilted the layers together densely, anticipating a LOT of washing.
The creative part was the back. I tried something new.
Crisscrossing stripes that involved cutting the entire piece in two for inserting the next stripe. Getting them to line up well was the challenge. It was fun.
The best farm news this week is that we have a new person on staff: Zainal, a 16 year old neighbor, now a trainee and part-time worker. I have known and loved Zainal since he was three years old and crawled on my lap at a local function and sat there for an hour playing with my bangles. He has always felt like another grandchild.
The father heard that we were thinking of hiring Zainal, and that may have had some bearing on the next item – something unexpected on my gate.
I came home to this:
Daisy on a garbage bag. It was odd and did not make sense.
Turned out it was a whole leg from a cow. A lot of meat! Like $250 worth of meat! Sheesh! Such a surprise!
It was a lot of work for Akka to get it all cut into meal-size freezer packs. And his first meals from it have been delicious. (Apologies to my Indian and vegetarian friends.- we won’t ever bring it out when you are here.)
***
The only other thing of particular interest this week is that Tuesday evening I was in a zoom meeting. Suddenly, Austin was trying to get my attention, and moments later, Keith was in my room asking for my phone.
The big deal was a very pretty sunset – which I REALLY WAS appreciating even as I talked.
Keith used my phone to get a photo.
The universe wanting us to pay attention before it turns out the lights.
Flora and Fauna Weekly Report 