table!

We're getting there!  The deck furniture has started to arrive! And I was home just in time from a long long day to see it in the evening light.  A little later, post dusk, two very fat raccoons waddled by, and they seemed to approve of it, too ... This needs moving a tiny bit to the left, but it's already looking very much at home: we just look forward to the weather getting a little warmer and to the rain moving on out ...

 

surprisingly pretty!

You'd think, maybe, that this was served at some fancy restaurant in Hawai'i, or perhaps in Silver Lake ... but no: this, improbably, appeared in front of me at lunch in the University Club today (it's gnudi - little balls of ricotta and semolina - much lighter than gnocchi - and, apparently, the contents of a window box).  I can only assume that this is the institution's latest contribution to sustainabilty, along with removing the waste bins from our rooms and installing sortable containers for different sorts of debris in the corridors.  This has me concerned about the contract cleaning staff, who currently empty the bins. And, I kid you not, the university offers the rationale that walking further to the recycling boxes will benefit not just the planet, but our physical health (through exercise) and mental wellbeing (through taking a break from our work).  Yeah, sure.

 

back!

... and this emphatically not a Hawai'ian sunset, but one seen from the top of the Royal Street Parking Structure, after a long day's teaching - undergrad class on quilts in the morning, which failed to interest them at all. Two years ago, the topic was the stand-out popular favorite on my C19th US art and democracy course - a compelling argument about quilting as a cross-class, cross-ethnicity practice, with some contemporary stuff about the AIDS quilt and the Migrant Quilt Project thrown in; plus material about crazy quilts, and the anticipation of abstract art, and missionaries forcing quilt making on native Hawai'ians, and and and.  I think I'd have had a more lively class if I'd launched a discussion on scented versus unscented garbage bags.  Mid-terms, I suspect.  Then a three hour grad class on C19th Indian art/craft/design in my British Art and Empire course, where we ended up going down some fascinating rabbit holes (like what Australian exhibits were on show at the 1883-84 Calcutta International Exhibition - largely food and drink, it seemed, and a needlework portrait of Queen Victoria).  Then a meeting with a grad student.  So ... I was glad to get away before the sun actually sank.  Loudly croaking frogs in the rainforest seem a distant memory.

 

one last waterfall view

Hard to believe this was this morning ... just back home, at 1.30 a.m., to a rapturous welcome from Moth and Gramsci.  But I have to teach in the morning .... 

 

rainforest, lichen

The view from our little rainforest cabin this morning ... and then this afternoon, when the rains came down.  I spent some time today trying to draw/paint the view, which was ... challenging.

Then this morning we went to one of my favorite botanical gardens, just outside Hilo, which has extraordinary orchids.

and other plants ...

and then back to our inn/organic farm/small corner of paradise, where we walked down to the river past bamboo groves and palm trees with extraordinary varieties of lichen;

including lichen growing on Buddhas,

and the chance to see the waterfall that we can see from our cabin from very close up indeed.

No wonder this property manages to be off the grid, with self-sustaining hydro-electric power (as well as some solar panels, though I'm not all that sure when the sun shines).

Somewhere in the middle we had some excellent home grown, home roasted Hilo coffee.

Our last night, now, with frogs chirping away outside ...

 

both sides of the Big Island

And here is Alice, and, er, Alice, on the lanai of our little cottage in the very wet rain forest somewhere inland from Hilo.  Alice 2, who is black and furry, is sitting on a cushion on the left, and adopted us as soon as we arrived.  We hope we are going to be able to sleep tonight - the frogs are very loud, and we can also hear the waterfall - (which is beautiful)  -as is the pitch pitch dark.

Earlier, seeking a bit of sunshine, we went over to the west coast, and found a beautiful almost secluded beach near Spencer State Park - reached by walking through an apocalyptic post-fire (August 2023) landscape.

And this is the view from an overlook, en route,

and this is the view from our lanai -- that is, our deck.  Not bad ...

 

bits of Hawai'ian nature

I was up early enough to witness a magic golden moonset.  After that ... one of the hotel ponds, which rises and falls with the tides, even though it has no outlet to the sea; and some steaming volcano views, both in a huge but distant  crater, and rising up from sulfurous holes in the ground.

 

dawn, sunset

dawn, sunset, sparrows invading a breakfast table, and me trying to look as though I haven't been alive for seven decades (although being very happy to have done so!).  Since I was driving for a lot of today, not many photos ... but it was an excellent and restful and thoroughly sybaritic time.

 

let's do it in style

OK - so it's a scarily big birthday tomorrow, so let's do it in style.  My undergrads didn't seem to object to the Wellness Day (as they termed it) that's been on the syllabus all semester, and normal service will be resumed next week ... The top and bottom pictures, I'll point out, show the view from our balcony for the next two nights: this will help soften the blow ... 

 

abandoned plant

Nestling under an azalea bush in a damp and overlooked corner of campus, here's what looks like an abandoned white poinsettia.  Someone, evidently, couldn't quite bear to throw it out - but it's the epitome of horticultural melancholy.

 

Alice's very wet birthday

It's a good job we didn't have anything planned that involved outdoors today - we didn't even manage a walk.  Our biggest adventure was a quick scamper to the dry cleaners and Trader Joe's (because we realised that we'd run out of wine, and what were we going to toast Alice's birthday with, in that case?).  It was a quiet day of book writing (her) and teaching prep (me), and looking carefully and critically at the guttering ...

 

this year's blossom display

This year's Asian pear, in full bloom - and probably about to get battered by the next storm that's coming through tomorrow.  That yellow, behind, looks like some other kind of blossom, but actually it's the morning sun hitting young green leaves.  And that was pretty much the only sun that we saw all day ...

 

cake

We're hurtling towards our birthday week - maybe this is the start of our birthday week - this was certainly the first. and almost certainly the prettiest, bite of cake.  This is a year in which I'm determined to be celebratory ... so despite the teaching, and teaching prep, and everything else that's crowded into the next couple of days, this was a perfect beginning.

 

the Wall

Another step - the wall along the back of the deck and the path that leads on from it is now painted (the same color as the house).  We're getting there!  Next week there are a few plants that will go into the ground in front of it, so it won't look quite so stark.  Round the corner ... the painter had to cover up some darling little raccoon footprints on the raw stucco, but I'm sure that critters will be able to leave their muddy marks again very soon, after the next storm rolls in at the end of the weekend ...

 

citrus

To the Huntington today, after teaching, for a conference-planning meeting (watch this space) - and the orange and, I think, kumquat groves are in full fruit-bearing force.  I love how the Huntington's sign, by the oranges, says "Please do not harvest" - so much classier, surely, than the usual peremptory "Please" - if one's lucky to hit on a polite sign writer - "do not pick."  

The clouds were amazing over the mountains this evening - like a live manifestation of British Romanticism.

 

happy valentine's

I dropped into Gelson's on my way home yesterday, since I needed to pick up a couple of things - and they had some very tempting little bags of heart-shaped macaroons.  It would have been churlish and unfeeling not to have bought some for Alice ...

 

framed

There was something very pleasing about the back of the truck in front of me on my way home up S. Hoover Street this evening (or else I'd just reached that stage of the day when almost anything was more fun to look at than a room full of students, much though I love them ...).  I think it was the torn paper on the left hand side, the remnants of goodness knows what advertisement or notification, but now, with rust breaking through, like people's limbs sprawling across a landscape.  Or not - maybe that's just my mind Rorschach-testing away when faced with a visual challenge.

 

camelia season

They're doing well this year - I think that the deluge that we had back in August must have helped them.  But they also have a decidedly unnatural texture: I understand why people call them "waxy" - they seem to be modeled, and would be very happy living under a Victorian glass dome, gathering dust.

 

more intrepid hikers

Today, up into Griffith Park - so that's some decent hill walking two days in a row (particularly our own street, coming back up on the road - an especially long incline when one thinks one's got to the end of an actual hike.  Actually there is a short cut which means that one walks down, not up, to the house - but that involves a very steep and probably still extremely muddy bank).  GP not as rain-damaged - at least where we were - as Will Rogers, although there were a number of rock falls.  

The bottom picture is a decidedly thin slice of an image - but there simply wasn't a picture that showed Alice standing at a good angle (except when concealed by a jacket), so I censored.

 

post-storm hiking

A hike today in Will Rogers State Park - up to Inspiration Point and then some of the Backbone Trail - with quite extraordinary clear views over to Catalina Island on one side, and to snowy mountains on the other - and a wattle tree - I think - in full flower in the middle.  Great to catch up with my oldest friend (lifelong minus three years and two weeks, since that's the age difference between us).  And yes - Véronique is a lot taller than I am ...

 

Hi!

Moth and Gramsci would like to make it known that I've been so preoccupied - seemingly - with the weather recently that they really haven't had much of a public presence.  Oh, and they'd like some kibble, please.