2/10 Weeding the Garden

Today was another rainy day. It wasn’t too bad in the morning so we decided to go out to cut down some black wattle and black wood trees near Berry Flats to use as pig deterrents. Dave was in his element using the chain saw and the rest of us used our machetes to clean off the branches to make long poles about 3-4 inches in diameter. We then loaded them on to the pickup truck and drove down the road to the parking area of the Awa awa puhi trailhead. There are two enclosures planted with native plants of the area. They are fenced in with chicken wire, but the wild pigs have figured out how to dig under the fence to get to the plants. Some of us weeded around the edge of one fenced area and then laid the poles down on the ground against the fence and wired them on while the rest of us spent our time weeding around the native plants that were left. We didn’t finish everything as it started to pour so we finished cleaning up what we could and then went back to camp to have lunch at around 1:30. It was still pouring after lunch so we decided to call it a day and the Macphails and we jumped in the car and went down the hill to the museum. We had a great look around and bought a few hiking trail books that I hope we can use this weekend if it ever stops raining. The Hawaiians call rain Hawaiian snow that is better than our snow because you don’t have to shovel it! We drove the Macphail’s down to the telephone pole where you can get cell phone reception so they could call their daughter who lives on Oahu. The daughter and son-in-law are coming to Kauai tomorrow night so they will stay in Lihue for the weekend. When we got back to camp we spent some time making out a few postcards and then we had dinner. We might watch another movie tonight if we can stay awake. We will have a gathering here on Sunday to say goodbye to Leilani and Alan who will be leaving early Monday morning to go back to Alaska. Next week a group of students from Cornell will be coming in to work so the four of us are going to move into the cottage where Leilani and Alan have been staying. The cottage has two bedrooms, a bathroom and an eat in kitchen. This is going to be lovely as we were having nightmares thinking of sharing one bathroom with 20 college students! We started to watch Social Network, but it started raining so hard it drowned out the sound on the movie so we gave up and went to bed to read.