gardening | Saying nothing in particular

I am a picky eater; I really am. Gooey things make me squeamish.

But I tossed this gelatinous glob into my mouth and, per instructions, rolled it around with my tongue and then … bit down on the seed pod. I chewed a few crunchy bits and swallowed them before being warned by Mason: “You won’t get much sleep tonight but you will be regular as hell!”

I’d eaten the seeds of the cocoa plant; the things which are carefully fermented and ground into award winning cocoa powder. Mason was the Hawaiian botanist who, with all the charm, wit and energy of a young Robin Williams, kept a couple dozen chocoholics entertained for three hours.

Mason showing us the core of the cocoa pod with all those gooey globs of goodness.

Pods come in many shades of red-orange and banana-yellow. To ascertain which ones are ripe, they peel off a bit of the skin. Yellow inside is good-to-pick; green inside needs more time. Mason joked that the reason Hawaii produces so many good football players is that they grow up tossing cocoa pods. They’re about the same size as footballs and their skin is similar in texture.

Lydgate Farm is located at the base of the Makaleha Mountains near the end of Olohena Road (581). Besides the cocoa plants, they grow all kinds of native Hawaiian fruits, harvest honey from their own beehives, and, recently they’ve begun cultivating vanilla beans and producing their own vanilla extract. After you’ve heard the process for fertilizing vanilla plants, you’ll appreciate why real vanilla extract is so damn expensive! And always sold out. $65 dollars a bottle. Yikes!

I wouldn’t recommend this tour for everyone. It’s expensive and off the beaten track but for gardeners, cooks, and chocoholics it’s three hours of informative fun. Their chocolate is indescribably good, their honey is sublime and yes … I am still fighting the urge to buy the vanilla extract once it becomes available. God help me, I’m on the waiting list and I don’t even bake. Talk me down folks.

Next – I end with sunrises and sunsets. Let’s see if you can guess which is which! Aloha.

This time of year, when the rains give way to sunny days, in my mind I always hear e.e. cumming’s poem in just spring. Those of you who’ve studied poetry remember cummings. He never capitalized his name or the titles of his poems which I could never get away with in English class! Here he is reading the poem:

In California a break in the rain this time of year brings this urgency to all gardeners: Quick: Pull the weeds while they’re young and tender and the ground is mudluscious!!!

Sure they’re cute in their infancy. So many brilliant shades of green particularly after four years of drought, it seems a shame to try to uproot them but if you don’t, they will grow like – well – weeds. And once the ground starts to dry your best chance to get rid of weeds is with a jack hammer.

Which brings me back to mud. I don’t view mud as icky. Especially when my mud is rife with worms.

Isn’t this a lovely shot of mud?

It will dry out quickly if the California sun continues to shine.

And then my battle will be hard. But today was a mudluscious day.
i wore my garden hat.
i listened
to the birds

and the boy practicing basketball
thump… thump… thump

and the creek, dry for years roaring to life.

and i said oh what the heck and started my day
in the lower case.
with the worms and the mud.

oh please wordpress – don’t ruin my mudlicious day by insisting i capitalize everything!

(although clearly I’m no e.e. cummings)

Now, the theory of proper blogging etiquette dictates that I end this blog with a question, thus encouraging comments, but the question “what do you think about mud?” really seems a bit daft, don’t you think?