The Gospel of FREE TOES

[Frito Freddie]

Jul 23, 2010 19:33:17 GMT -5 Avril said:

Love the brightly contrasting colours on the houses! It looks as lush as I would expect! Wonderful.

I actually prefer the forest to an ocean view. Its not far. I personally think it is safer further inland and the trees and ferns sort of buffer us from our Hilo storms which happen often and may last as long as 5 days --- the longest one I remember.

[PigsnieLite]

WHUT? Your house is in the Path of Pele? Eeeeek! Arent you kinda scared? Are you cars big enough to load all the piggies & chickuns footling about?

If you pooped in a hole full of bubbling lava, I guess you wouldnt have to flush, would you? ;D

[sunfrog]

OMG! Look how lush and pretty it is there! That is the place for me! Frogs should not live in Arizona where it's dry and hot. They should live on Hilo where there's trees and shade and stuff! That's probably not even landscaped to look that way. It's probably Hawai'i's version of weeds and stuff that they don't like. Gosh it's pretty there! Waaaaah~ I yearn for exotic shores!!

[PigsnieLite]

My only problem wid exotic shores is the HUmidity! I would be taking 3 showers a day (I hate to sweat and I shower lots when Im in Asia.) ! I would exhaust Hilo's fresh water supply in a month. And I dont swim.

[Avril]

Where do Brit kids learn to swim? At Brighton?


In heated municipal swimming baths? Have you ever swum in the Roman baths at Bath?


I learned to swim in hot springs. It was a wee bit dodgy due to the unidentified floaties of suspicious origin in the steamy green opaque water. This modern pic is obviously sanitised.

[PigsnieLite]

I dont think most Brit kids swim, unless you do competitive rowing. Pigsnit can swim of course, becuz he rowed in Eton & Oxford. BATH is pretty but I dont swim in their suspicious looking waters.

[Frito Freddie]

Ok—this cottage is supposed to be a weekend hideaway so it doesn’t really have a lot of room. It’s an artist’s shack made up of struts, plywood planking and it stands on stilts over a small drop-off of ground.

Wart said it was the side of an old lava tube that the forest has grown over. There’s a small bedroom, a sitting room in the back and a library with a child’s bed built in under the bookshelves (where Mambo Chicken will sleep), a largish tatami-mat living room, and a sleeping loft extending partway over it. But the most interesting part is the kitchen.

It’s an old-fashioned Japanese-style daidokoro—a banner-shaped room that was the width of the house and it drops off 3 feet from the living room down to the traditional dirt floor of the lower level which opens to the outdoors through back and front entrances. By the rear entrance, there’s a propane stove that you light with matches. Near the front door, are sinks and faucets which are driven by a water pump which I had to attach to my car battery (per instructions) I brought in a generator for that.

The toilet flushes but it’s on it’s own, detached from the cottage in an outhouse under a shed built onto a small rear deck that runs all the way around the back. There are stacks of Smithsonian, Mother Earth’s News, and Kiplinger and it had a skylight of white window glass high above the seat. There’s also a tiny sauna stoked by a woodstove the size of a piece of luggage. The shower was built on a rampway that ran along the opposite side of the toilet and the owner had planted red and white impatiens in the forest so that when you washed, the blossoms and the shower spray and the rain forest’s constant drizzle is your shower curtain.

This is not the house but the vegetation is the same. This house is much larger than mine and the deck is not entirely covered.

[Frito Freddie]

Jul 23, 2010 23:28:03 GMT -5 sunfrog said:

OMG! Look how lush and pretty it is there! That is the place for me! Frogs should not live in Arizona where it's dry and hot. They should live on Hilo where there's trees and shade and stuff! That's probably not even landscaped to look that way. It's probably Hawai'i's version of weeds and stuff that they don't like. Gosh it's pretty there! Waaaaah~ I yearn for exotic shores!!

Hehe--only the rich landscape their surroundings. The rain forest just grows and grows around you. They sell cheap land here. At least compared to LA prices. On the Big Island, you can build your own little shack but it might be expensive getting on the grid if you want to live in isolation.

[PigsnieLite]

Is this house for rent? Ooh, love the lanai? the veranda? It looks so cool! Is there a TV? Whut does one do for entertainment in Hawaiian getaway cottage? And how is the mosquito problem? My delicate skin is very senseeteeve to the bite of the mosky.

[Avril]

You'd need bulk supplies of citronella oil, Arch. ;D

[shoegirl]

Beautiful video Frito! It looks like paradise to me. One of these days I need to go somewhere tropical!

How often do you encounter snakes where you live? Are you afraid of them? How large are they?

[Frito Freddie]

Hehe---there are no snakes in Hawaii. Well-- they're not part of the native fauna anyway. We check all commercial and cargo planes for these hitch-hikers. Because they will become top predator if they get a foothold here. Its illegal to own snakes. Its a 25,000 fine or something like that. And ya go to jail.

You never know though what has escaped into our jungle. Hopefully snakes are so few that they will never find each other . . . to breed.

You know, in these economic times, we're actually pretty cheap. All sort of deals. Especially if you leave Honolulu and come to the Big Island

[shoegirl]

That is wonderful news! I thought snakes were in all tropical places! Now I just have to work on Tyler to come with me.

Even my brother who is not much of a traveler has been to Hawaii. The most tropical place I have ever been is LA or Los Vegas, or Rome (none of which really qualify at all as tropical).

[Frito Freddie]

Frito Gets Some Groceries

It's a bit of a drive to the grocery store, passing a few miles of Japanese minka-roof houses that are built on shallow posts set in concrete up over wet ground. A few have bentwood-frame hothouses (instead of garages) that are covered with old sheets and rotting plastic tarps, crammed with plank tables and a few odd rows of potted orchids. I will pick up a few for the house on my way back home.

The store is larger than what I usually go to; a lot of tourists and their rental cars are there . . . especially over the island fruit. Dried Chinese plums, slices of mangoes--red and wrinkled in cellophane. There's Li Hing Mui-- the moist pink ones that you use for sweet-and-sour soup that kids can make. The Sak Seed--a salty dry white mango--can only be eaten by adults, eaten whole and with cups of whisky. Its used as medicine for colds or flu. I pick up some stumpy and hairy Japanese potatoes for a stew and there's the brown paste of poi wrapped in plastic bags and stacked like bread in their own section.

I get kinako-- a Japanese soy powder that we use to flavor sweet rice cakes; and I get another that will flavor the batter for tempura when I deep-fry shrimpand sliced vegetables. And a 50 pound paper sack of Hakutsuru rice. Canned goods: been curd, sweet black beans, bamboo shoots and sliced lotus root. That's good with stewed carrots, seaweed and those long white radishes.

They also had a special on umbrella plants and ornamental pear bonsai trees. Hehe--can't resist those. Especially the former. You can grow them indoors

Here's a sample of a guy pruning bonsai. I can repot it but I am afraid to prune it as drastically as this guy did.

[Wart]

I'm gonna post in Frito's blog since I'm too lazy to have my own. And Frito was there too anyway. It was a slapdance contest. It looks like a haka but it isn't. Supposed to originate from natives slapping bugs and mosquitoes. Haha.

Anyway here's the Haka I really like.
The ALL BLACKS!