Aloha

It's been a while since I've posted, but it has been an extremely crazy year. Andy and I finally sold the house in Vista at the beginning of July and had our last day on the property on July 23rd. We moved to Hawaii at the beginning of August. But, that last month in Vista was a wild one. We had developed an amazing garden over the last 10 years, and put a lot of work into it. It was kinda sad to say goodbye, but I've been told when you have a dream, to follow it, so we did. Hawaii has always been a popular vacation destination for us, and we considered retiring there. Andy and I started looking at some land to buy on the Big island for the future, and we quickly realized that prices had really come down over here, if we could sell the house back in California. After lowing the price considerably, to bring it in line with plunging values in the neighborhood (Ouch!), we finally sold to a great family, who really appreciate the garden, which made us very happy. They even took the chickens and goats.

So packing and making arrangements to move to an Island in the middle of the Pacific required some major planning. In less than 30 days we sold most of the furniture, what was left of the nursery, (after we had started it up again), packed a container for Hawaii & said good buy to friends. Their was a glitch with the dogs and they are staying with our good friend Dani up in Apple Valley until they can be shipped over the end of this Month (September 09). For us it's been hard not to have them around, but we'll be better settled in by then, and things will be stable.

We bought a brand new house about 10 blocks from the ocean in a community called Hawaiian Paradise Park, not far from Pahoa, a small town that looks the wild west in the tropics. It's about 15 miles south of Hilo, the largest city on this side of the island. Adjusting to a Hawaiian frame of reference has been interesting, they tell us that it's dry down where we bought, it only gets about 90" of rain a year. After having an average rainfall of 8" a year in San Diego, this may take some getting used to. The really wet places her

e can get up to 200" a year. The rental we have been

living is in Leilani, about another 5 miles south. We are farther inland here and get a lot of rain. It rains almost every night and things are very lush. The little house is tucked in the jungle just off the main road. The garden is surrounded by strawberry guava which has overtaken the native landscape to the point of being impenetrable. Moss covers

everything, and Hedychium gingers, Ti's and Heliconias are everywhere. It really is beautiful, even though we are basically camping

out, since most our belongings are being held until the escrow closes on the new house, which happens this week. Most of our time has been spent setting things up here, and having fun. Not to far from us are the Kapoho tide pools which offer excellent snorkeling, as well as a small black sand beach in Kehena which is as beautiful as can be. Large coconut trees, rocky cliffs and amazing clear blue water just cool enough to be refreshing, but not so warm as to be like bath water. We have already begun to amass quite a few plants. I'm still getting used to the fact that it is about 83 every day here and 70 at night. They tell me it gets cold here in the winter, the high

60's. There has never been a recorded frost here and the water quality is excellent. Paradise - I'll post again soon - tom