Lunar Eclipse!

How cool! We had a total lunar eclipse last night. Don took this wonderful picture in our front yard at 3:12am. The moon and its habits are so fascinating and beautiful! And I adore the magical glow it sheds on the garden at night. Oh! I need to make a moon garden. (click here too) This is a very special spot in the garden especially for nighttime flowers and creatures. It is a quiet place to sit on summer evenings, with fragrent flowers like moon flowers and jasmine. Nighttime visitors include frogs, crickets, bats, moths....and the neighbor's cat...
Here's a couple more links with some cool facts and folklore about the moon and its phases: Click here or click here
Oh here's a neat gadget for the moon garden: Solar Flowers

HOME AT LAST!!! Much to Do!

We've been home now for a week and a half. Oh it feels so good! Yesterday we went to Riverside State Park and saw an osprey and a bald eagle! What a nice welcome home! These are two pictures Don took on that hike. The day before we went up to Mount Spokane to look for huckleberries, but the bushes were very small and bare. Not enough rain this year. (sorry, I couldn't find a good link on the huckleberry. Ours is the Vaccinium Membranacem. I'll have to take some pictures and post some info on these)
The yard was a bit of a mess to our dismay. Our property management people left the automatic sprinkler system on for us, but no one mowed the yard for the month our house was vacant. The grass grew up over the sprinkler heads, so they were blocked. So we had this dead brown yard with brilliant green spots all over it!!!! I should of taken a picture! 'Didn't think about that till just now. Sorry. Anyway, now its mowed and starting to recover. We used the thick clippings from the green spots to start a compost pile. Grif made a quick frame with a 10 by 3 foot piece of hardware cloth from the hardware store on the corner.
We also had to trim up our box elder tree. We want to remove this tree because it's a fast-growing, and very brittle tree. NOT a good tree in a climate where the limbs break under heavy snow and ice in winter (as in the ice storm of 1992!). It's gonna take a lot of work to get this tree in decent shape before winter sets in.
When I left before, I had a nice hedge of black currents along the southern fence. All but 3 frail bushes are dead and gone. So I think I'll put in a row of bayberry. They may be a bit hard to find, but it will be worth the effort! On the other side of the yard I want to put in a row of high bush blueberries and maybe bilberries underneath.
I need to build a home for our allowed 3 chickens. Our yard is covered in maple bugs! But a week of chicken-grazing should take care of that! We have also found several hobo spiders around the yard and have killed 4 in the basement. Yikes! But again, I think our chickens will gobble them up.
Much to do! Much to do! :) I better get to work!

MAIN MOVING DAY!!!

So now we are up to our ears in movers! Not much time to say anything. Oh how glad I will be when this is done!!! We are about half finished I would say, and we only had ONE packer yesterday! But for the first time, WE could pack too! And wow what a difference that makes! It was tiring, but we get a LOT of packing done! They are supposed to send 3 guys today to help us, so we should get most of the rest done today. YAY! Well,... off to the boxes!

Baggage Away!

Well the move has officially started! Our unaccompanied baggage was picked up today, and that went very well! Don and one of the packers talked non-stop the whole time about military history and crash sites on the island. As it turns out, this guy knows the guy that owns the land where this crash site is that Don has been hoping to get access to. (Did that make sense?) Packer-guy is going to set it up for Don and call this weekend and probably hike with him to the site. Don was stoked!
So only 3 weeks until the main pack starts. I have much I want to get done, so I'll be quite the busy bee! I have sewing projects I need to finish, I have more computer files I need to sort and get backed up, I need to get the yard sale together for not this weekend, but next (the 7th), and we still need to get the bushes in the backyard whacked back down to a reasonable size. I swear, whoever thought it was a good idea to plant bougainvilleas as a hedge obviously never had to maintain them!!!! They can be beautiful, but What a pain!! LITERALLY! The thorns are horrible! But at least this is the last time I have to deal with them! YAY!!

Less then 60 Days!!!!

The countdown has passed the 60 day mark!!! Woo Hoo!!! Less than 60 days to go!!! YAY!!!
It's time to start getting ready for our garage/ houseplant sale. And it's time to start packing our fragile things that I don't trust the movers to pack, -like Don's airplane models, and my glass hummingbirds, our wedding cake top, ...oh, yes, I have to get that big amethyst geode packed in its crate.
OH! the packing/ moving dates are finalized, by the way.
The movers will pack/ pick up our unaccompanied baggage on 26 June.
Our household goods are to be packed 16, 17, and 18 July and picked up on the 19th.

Dragon Fruit

This is one of the neatest, coolest fruits ever! :)
I first experienced a dragon fruit when my hubby brought one home from our local grocery about a year ago. I had never seen one before, and I had no idea what to do with it. So it sat in my refrigerator for, gosh, it must have been 3 months! Finally, when I was cleaning out the fridge, I decided to cut this strange fruit open and see what it was like. What a surprise!! The inside was translucent white, scattered with tiny black seeds. I smelled it, poked at it, and finally decided it had not gone bad. So I tasted it. Again a surprise! It tasted like,... well... dragon fruit! -Very delicate, light, and tropical. We bought several more, but again, they sat around. We just didn't know what to do with them. It's funny how we humans can be such creatures of habit! But, even though we haven't adopted these fruits into our diets yet, they have been in the back of my mind. So I finally decided to bring them to the front of my mind and do a bit of research on them. I found quite a few recipes; blended in smoothies and sorbet, balled in fruit salad, or just sliced and served! The first thing I learned to my complete and total shock was that my mother had a rather large dragon fruit plant as a houseplant when I was a kid! I just never knew what it was! It never made any fruit, as dragon fruit needs 2 or more plants in order to set fruit. But I do remember the stunning flowers! I also remember how easy it was to grow. I've read, too, how this plant is easily grown from cuttings or from seed simply collected from the pulp of the ripe fruit. So add dragon fruit to the list of plants we will be growing in our greenhouse!
Just look at all the varieties at this link!
Pine Island Nursery
Guess what! dragon fruit grows wild here in Hawaii! I've seen them on several hikes in misty areas of the island, though I've not seen any with fruit. If I had known what they were, I'd have brought home a few cuttings! Here's an article in our local paper about growing dragon fruit here in Hawaii:
Honolulu Advertiser, Island Life

Yikes! New Vaccine --Problems!

http://www.newswithviews.com/Tenpenny/sherri14.htm

"Problems with the cervical cancer vaccine starting to emerge.

"Five schoolgirls at Sacred Heart Girls' College in suburban Melbourne, Australia, were confirmed to have taken ill after receiving an injection of Gardasil, the newest vaccine to be mandated for young girls. Soon after the vaccination, twenty-six girls were seen at the campus medical clinic; five were admitted to the hospital after being injected. Two of the girls kept in overnight in observation for dizziness; one had temporary paralysis and loss of speech.[1]
*snip*

"Histidine, an amino acid, readily converts into another amino acid, histamine, when it enters the body. When released, histamine causes redness, swelling, itching and allergic reactions leading to widening of capillaries, decreased blood pressure… people can faint. The vaccine also contains Polysorbate 80, an agent used in creams, ointments, lotions, and multiple medical preparations including vitamin oils, and anticancer agents. Polysorbate 80 is a can cause potentially fatal reactions in including anaphylaxis, characterized by a sharp drop in blood pressure, hives, and breathing difficulties… people can faint."

There are better ways to prevent cancer than poisoning your body!

• eat a healthy diet of fresh RAW fruit, nuts, seeds, and vegetables
• exercise EVERY day for at least half an hour-- more is better
• do not smoke
• do not drink alcohol in excess (more than 6-8 oz per day- depending on body weight)
• get 10 to 30 minutes of sunshine on as much bare skin as possible EVERY day (unless it's raining!) double that in winter- triple for winter in northern climates
  
• drink filtered tap water or bottled water
• And this one may surprise you-- practice a religion or spirituality- The act of seeking God/Higher Power is VERY health-promoting!*

* Caution- Negative religious ideas such as unworthiness, self-sacrifice, fear, and death are detrimental to health. Avoid these pitfalls at all costs! Keep it positive! Ideas such as oneness, unity, love, abundance, sharing, life, and resurrection; these concepts are life-enriching and health-promoting.