Waking Up Coquis, Pumping Iron

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

3/19/22

Aloha All!

Well, my rain dance worked.  Last Friday night we got .3" (I guessed .25" but my rain gauge showed more).  Then on Sunday night we got another .5", and on Wednesday a whopping 1.2", making a total for the week of 2 inches.  So at least here in the neighborhood we had a break from the drought.  This woke up the coquis, of course, who promptly started singing to make up for lost mating time.  I caught a couple and my neighbor did too, both of us finding them in new areas.  Our theory is that while it was dry the frogs stayed in place, particularly if it was somewhere where there was moisture from irrigation, and then when the rain came they decided to explore new territories.  At the moment, though, there seem to be fewer males singing than before the dry cold weather started.  We're hoping, probably with much too much optimism, that a number may have not survived the unfavorable weather.  Yeah, right.

It was a pretty quiet week.  Our Oregon friend arrived for her short visit on Sunday.  She's Karen's golf buddy who used to spend a lot of time here with her husband until his health made it necessary for him to remain in Portland.  On Tuesday she played golf with Karen and her current partner at Makani course, further up north than Makalei.  I wasn't invited, so I went to Planet Fitness instead. Might have overdid it a teense, and my muscles let me know it the next couple of days.  Despite the lessening of covid restrictions (though masks are still required at PF) and only a few new cases, the number of people seemed about the same -- that is, very few given the size of the venue.  

Spring Blooms

We celebrated St. Patrick's Day by having a corned beef dinner with our Oregon friend at our house.  It was a very pleasant evening, and we were even able to eat outside by our pool.  Our signs of spring, which most visitors don't notice,  are getting more pronounced.  One is that the snowball bloom of the plumerias that begins down slope has now reached our neighborhood.  This is where the flowers appear on the bare branches before new leaves develop.  The flowering will continue until next fall, when the trees become bare again.  The reason most visitors don't notice this change is because stuff is blooming here all year around, and very few kinds of trees lose their leaves.

We're proceeding with our travel plans for both the Caucasus trip coming up and for the Germany trip in the fall.  We were in contact with the company running the Caucasus tour this week and as of right now it's still going.  After the tour (about 3 weeks) we've made arrangements to stop over in Chicago for several days, which should be fun. We haven't been there in many years and we're looking forward to it.  We'll also try to see an old friend who lives near Chicago and also spend a couple of days in Rockford, where Karen's Swedish relatives emigrated and where her mother is buried.  As I mentioned last week, all these arrangements can be canceled without losing anything,  just in case germs and/or autocrats go berserk again.

Ok, off to market and breakfast. Take care and be sure to notice whatever is positive that comes your way. It might be easy to miss in the avalanche of bad stuff these days.