Yesterday was a beautiful day filled with sunshine. After returning from the market we decided to drive around the neighborhood and venture up and down some roads we never have before. We happened to bump into one of our new friends named Dale and he was nice enough to give us a tour of his property in the back of the subdivision. It’s literally on road 27 which is the last road in our neighborhood. When you drive back there you wouldn’t even know it’s still part of the neighborhood because they have a green gate set up blocking the road in order to trick people into thinking it’s a private drive. This greatly reduces the chances of theft. Dales place was amazing. Let me first mention that he moved here in 1979 so his landscaping has had a long time to mature. His place looks somewhat like Jurassic park. Giant palm trees line the road and he has all sorts of fruit trees in an orchard that were amazing to look at. Oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, lemons limes and bananas, all covered with fresh fruit and delicious from what we tried. His massive Avocado tree was also just finishing up it’s fruiting this year. Truly beautiful and inspiring to see just how much any one of these plants can produce once fully grown.
While touring the neighborhood we stopped in and saw our good friends Wayne and Tonya. We noticed that Wayne’s Cacao tree was producing pods, the pods are what chocolate is actually derived from. Very cool to see on the tree. Wayne has plans to try and process these into his own chocolate so I will let you know if and when that happens. Our red cacao tree is not doing very well, it’s actually getting it’s ass kicked up at our house along with our mountain blueberry. Something is eating the blueberry and I’m not sure what’s going on with the cacao tree. A lot of these plants are very sensitive to light and water so finding the perfect balance with each individual species is going to take some time and experience to figure out. Not to mention the bugs birds and rats enjoy some plants much more then others so we always have to be conscious of them.
All and all we are both still very happy with our decision to move to Hawaii, the neighborhood is a nice place to live. We have heard various stories of crime but we’ve also taken lots of necessary precautions to protect our property and valuables. For the most part a lot of the stories are tall tales, designed to keep people away or discourage them from moving to the area. We live on a very quiet road with lots of privacy and that is something that I’ve always wanted.