Those photo's are a bit random aren't they? The nursery is looking dry, we having a bit of a water crisis right now... Dams drying up, pumps breaking down, tanks almost empty...
You almost can't see the london buses but they are in one of the shots.
You can see the goat swale you were asking about in one of them, right?
There is one shot of the hedge that we were starting on back in December 04. You asked if I was making a slip and slide? There is a patch in there where we ran out of peanut, and never got back to. It is gratifying to see that although it is all grass down in there, that the shade from the legumes etc has stopped the grass from reattaining its 6 ft height of yore.

Watered bamboo's, did some more weedwhacking of terraces in the gulch, made a bamboo cantilever fishing net for the bottom pond, slaughtered a yum yum. It didn't actually go quite so well as the first time. There was a bit of a struggle, in which in trying to make things as as peaceful for the goat as possible I managed to slice off the tip of my left thumb. How is that for instant karma, eh? Well, I can use a little break, some time to finish off Paul Theroux's "Hotel Honolulu"...

With the help of 2 wwoofers, Tim and Sharesa, we planted about 150 pidgeon pea seedlings in amongst the E. Degluptas on the Loomis lane side of the gulch.
Tim and I had put in a couple dozen more peanut in Takako's food forest before we got started on that too. We had to reprime the siphon out of the top pond as the level is getting so low that air leaks are making things tough. Oh, for that sunpump...
Still, we had enough water to water in the pidgeon peas, and still some mulch left from Coursen to do the pidgeon peas. Nice mulch too, a mixture of monkeypod, cassia fistula, madagascar olive and cook pine. POssible that some madagascar olive will came up from the mulch, but we can just use it as chop and drop.
Had to separate the yum yum goat who was getting harassed by sheba and moon and breaking loose. Had him tied out for a lot of the afternoon. At one point thought he was getting attacked by a pack of dogs and went tearing across the gulch only to find him snoozing on a bed of nahiku grass.
Did I record here that we planted 2 more black sapotes, 3 peanut butter fruit, and surinam cherry? Well, we did.
After the wwoofers knocked off, I got the weedwacker going and continued to clear terraces around the pond. Fed the fish some leftovers from lunch. That is really a good way to "dissolve tension", feeding the fish.
Raked a lot of the mulch from the terraces up to throw into the chicken run.

I had a pretty classic headless chicken day today. Started out I spent an hour and a half pulling weeds out of the bottom swale. It has really started to get weedy. Will have to get onto it so that the peanut doesn't disappear under the grass in one season...
Then I set about mulching the brandisii in the gulch. Used 50 gallon garbage bins to haul woodchips from the truck in the goat pen down to where they were needed. In the process I spotted a bunch of new running bamboo shoots, and whacked them off with sickle I had with me. Did I mention that I had started to purge the phyllostachys? It is really interesting to see it respond. Basically about 10 days I cut off everything that I could see. I probably missed about 10% of it. The shoots that have come up since are pretty good size! I imagine that it will keep trying to shoot and gradually the shoots will get weaker and smaller until finally either it dies or I do...
I planted one more Brandisii down there in a hole that I had previously made for a cacao and never got to. Had the hose siphoning water out of the top pond so I watered all of the brandisii's again as I gave them a good mulching. Still have one more to put in down there. It is going to be fun gradually reducing the christmas berry/java plum/guava canopy as this stuff starts to rise up.
Then I went up to the nursery and potted on the rest of the textilis and 20 odd pheasant wood (cassia siamensis). Spent quite a bit of time pulling weeds out of pots. If we don't get 10 ml tonight I am going to have use the tank water to get the pots wet, as the whole nursery has gotten dry. I hand watered from a bucket out of the goat roof catchment 50 gallon barrell the things I potted, plus the grafted trees we bought from frankies...
went back to get my sickle and shovel from the gulch, and ended up pulling weeds for another hour in takako's food forest. pruned some pidgeon peas and mulched the abiu and the canistel and a cacao.
dug some holes around the windward perimeter to put degluptas. tried to dig holes under the hao, but golly it has roots going everywhere down there. I think you'd need a stump grinder to dig a hole in there.
decided not to plant as I didn't have the hoses to reach out to edge handy and would spend too long fucking around to get them. so, I scooped a little salvinia out of the top pond and mulched the brandisii's up there. gave them some more pond water, and used a knife to pull the grass off the gliricidia and that areca palm or whatever it is. so good to finally have started clearing that terrace...

Recieved 20 Brandisii from the Twin Falls Bamboo Propagation Action Committee, and even had some help from one of its directors planting them on Friday evening. 11 I think it was Brandisii went on the terraces at the entrance to Lillikoi lane, we stopped at the stairway down from the pond. So, when those guys get up, it will be quite the imposing driveway entrance on that side if you get what I mean, what with the the Guadue as on one side and the brandisii on the other.
The rest went down into the gulch, in and around the timber tree plantings on the ocean side of the ginger terrace.
I also started work on the holes for the textilis hedge that is going in soon.

Doesn't show much but this is the delupta planting with gliricidia and pidgeon pea interplants.

Looking across the gulch to the north east at "Takako's food forest". You can't see the abundance of weeds that need to be dealt with, but you can see the peanut beginning to fill out and the bananas, gliricidias and sesbanias doing their thing on the upper part of the slope

This is the Inge next to the Dollhouse, with a mango in the background. This tree probably doubled in size in the last 18 months, and has lots of fruit on it at the moment.

If you look closely you can see a blue fish. It is one of the tilapia we scooped out of the ditch in Kahului. They are getting bigger, and they have spawned probably a hundred or so little fingerlings.

YOu can see that the nahiku is running rampant over the sign at the entrance of the property. Oh well. The red flowers about to bloom are that Indian Coral tree, a thorny erithrina.