You think YOU'VE got snails??????????

I've found a few discarded shells in my garden before, but this is the first live (now very dead) one that I've come across.

He's not a native to Hawaii. I think his official name is Big Beautiful African Snail.

His DNA made him beautiful, but my garden plants made him BIG. I had no choice but to put an end to that. Sorry, Mr Snail.

Dana

The Latest Addition to Our Family

Dogs in the tropics don't shed just in the summer. They shed 365 days a year!

99% of my vacuuming is just to stay on top of all the Sophie hair on my floors.

After much hesitation -- and suspicion that it would be more trouble than it was worth -- I got a new pet.

I find that I DO treat it like a pet: I talk to it (and it talks to me), I make sure that it's doing OK and hasn't wandered outside where it could fall to its death, I give it regular potty breaks. The talking is the strangest part -- it tells me when it needs something, and I find I talk back to it a LOT. Sophie is a little jealous.

Aloha!

Dana

Bathroom Remodel

From Day One in this house, I've had a wish list of things I want to replace or remodel.
Last year, I redid the pantry / laundry room and had the laundry and kitchen plumbed for gas.

Now, I've started on the guest bath and VERY SOON my kitchen. Replacing the bathroom tile backsplash was a test to see if this tile guy was capable of doing the tile in the kitchen. HE PASSED.

Here's the transition from an odd, unmatching, green backsplash to a new, multicolored three-dimensional natural stone...

The next step for the bathroom is new paint and fixtures. I'll be doing that myself while the hired gun tiles an entire wall in my kitchen.

Stay tuned for the kitchen transformation...

We Caught Our First Mongoose!

For those of you unfamiliar with the mammal situation in Hawaii, here's the scoop.

There are only two indigenous mammals in the islands - the Hawaiian Monk Seal and the Hoary Bat. We have no squirrels or rabbits or raccoons or any of those little creatures. But we have the mongoose. Way back when, someone brought mongooses here to control the rats in the cane fields. It didn't work. And now we have as many mongooses as rats. (I swear, that's the correct pluralization of mongoose.)

I don't mind the mongooses at all. Mongooses are lovely little critters... until they start eating my ripening tomatoes.

So... this weekend, we caught our first mongoose. He was SO cute, even when he tried to act threatening by showing his tiny little teeth. Unfortunately for him, all I could see was how those tiny teeth were the exact shape of the bite marks in my tomatoes.

Sophie and I drove him up the hill and introduced him to a new neighborhood. 

Aloha, Mr Mongoose!

Hawaii Five-O Gets Blessed

Each year before filming for the new season begins, the cast and crew of Hawaii Five-O gather for an early-morning blessing. They bless EVERYTHING here - shopping mall openings, ground-breaking ceremonies, and the first day of ANYTHING, even the first day of shooting for a TV show...

On Hawaii Five-O's Blessing Day, this is the number one news story on all the local channels. Cute, huh?

Elaine, Matthew, and Jenny Visit!

As you already knew, Jenny Richardson Bone is here on the island doing a work/study program for the summer. (Re: Megan and Jeff Visit)

Her parents, Elaine and Matthew, came to check up on her and celebrate her 25th birthday... and on Friday night, they all came for dinner!

A good time was had by all -- especially Miss Sophie!

Aloha!

Fun with Fireworks ! NOT !!!

You've heard me talk about how fireworks are legal here - even the big stuff that you'd NEVER see for sale anywhere in California. Here's a perfect example of why there is a push to ban the big stuff here in Hawaii.

Around noon on the 4th of July, I smelled smoke and very soon saw this plume of smoke down the hill from my house. It seemed VERY close, and I now know that it was only half a mile away.

You can hear the honks of the firetrucks in the distance. After a while, helicopters arrived and dumped water continuously until dark. At one point, the wind was blowing the smoke up the hill right into my house. We were choking on the smoke, and Sophie had the good sense to know that smoke = fire = bad. With the smoke enveloping us, it seemed much closer than it was and I was VERY concerned! I calmed down when the wind shifted and the smoke was no longer on top of us. 

About the time that the nerve-wracking noise from the helicopters stopped, the sound of my neighbors' fireworks started. Sophie was a wreck! I spent much of the night with the TV turned up loud and Sophie's head in my lap, with my hands covering and stroking her ears. !!!!!!!!!!! The poor little thing doesn't bark at the noise or overtly freak out. She just starts to shiver like she's freezing. 

When the helicopters left, I hoped that meant they'd put out the fire, but I checked several times in the night and could clearly see the smoke cloud still growing. At dawn on Sunday, the helicopters came back and worked until late in the afternoon.

Fortunately it was "only" a grass fire. My personal forensic investigation tells me that it was "kids" shooting off fireworks in the open field behind their houses. Here's where it was in relation to my house:

I'll end this story on a happy note: no houses were burned and we had a gorgeous sunset on Saturday night. These are smoke clouds coloring the sky:

Happy 4th of July, everyone!