Vicky Durand’s Adventure Blog #86

December 21, 2024

Welcome to Blog #86

This has been what I call a stupendous week!

The check arrived for half of the Green Grant money and Chase arrived with his excavator with the chipping claw. He has worked two days and has a giant path almost to the mango trees and pool at the top of the property. The first picture shows the big chopping claw that grabs the branches and shreds them. This is a job I tried to talk Bob into doing but he thought it was impossible. So many years later the “impossible” is happening with a reforesting grant. I love the impossible dream–just to make it happen when someone tells you it cannot be done. That is the adventure I am on.

From there starting on Tuesday he will do more on the path and then work on extending the clearing work on the edges. Getting this hau out has been a 25 year dream so needless ti say I am over the top thrilled. This was all beautiful pasture land in 1940 when Bob’s father purchased this property along with many other acres. This property, a part of Koali Ranch, has a lot of very important good and bad history . The bad is the way it was acquired by the man (Drummond) who sold it to Howard and Betty along with a partner. I think they were unsuspecting of the ways Drummond acquired the property from the local families.The story makes a chapter (or more) of outrageous Hawaiian history.

Thank gosh this is the shortest day of the year and the days will now start getting longer.

There have been a lot of long dark nights cutting into my afternoon gardening time.

We have had an amazingly amount of sunny beautiful days with hardly any rain. Hopefully we get some rain soon.

In last weeks blog when talking about my trip to Oahu I forgot to mention my wonderful hostess Jean who made my stay very comfortable and it was great catching up with her. Although she was a class ahead of me at school we didn’t really know each other until our mutual Holo Holo trip to Cuba. Sunday night’s party was a holo holo group get together.