Where there's ability, there's a way

Growing up in semi-industrial Kalihi (Kahai Street, Kawakami Delicatessen, Alicia Market a couple of blocks over, the neighbors killing a goat next door, illegal gambling in the warehouse next door, woohoo, good times!) where my grandparents lived, I used to think my parents' home in 'Aiea was just tropical and lush - and comparatively, it is.  But now that I live and garden in Kane'ohe, it seems they were gardening in the Taklimakan.  

But mom really knows what she's doing out there, and she can get some serious lushness going.  It helps that she has the greenhouse my dad welded for her.

Some of her anthurium plants in her greenhouse.

The other end of the greenhouse with some orange begonias in the front.

What my mom calls the "mother plant" - it's provided her with literally hundreds of baby anthuriums some of which you can see below.

You can see her gigantic obake anthurium in the background and below.

Pretty freaking spectacular, right?  I wish I had something to give you a sense of its size.  It was BIG.


My mom also does pretty well with orchids, and since she loves community pots and has the patience for 1) prying them apart and 2) them to get to the blooming stage, she's kind of rewarded big time.

Something that was flowering.  She told me the name, but as usual, I wasn't paying attention.  Poor mom; at least she isn't surprised.

A poor shot of flowering oncidium orchid. 

My dad also liked gardening, but his preference was more of the frankensteinian variety.  He loved to graft and air layer plants.  I'll try and get better shots of the plumeria tree in the back yard.  There are three different plants grafted to one base: tricolor, pink, and yellow.  It's hard to see in the photo below.

The tricolor flowers are on the left, the pinks are at the top right, and the yellows are below the pinks.


So that's the short tour of my mom's back yard.  I missed a LOT of stuff, but I'll get to it eventually.  Right now, it's time to go dig in my latifundia.