Special Places to Eat on Maui

Aloha to all from Maui! I wanted to share with each of you a couple of special places that we like to eat whenever we are on Maui. Perhaps our favorite place to have breakfast is the 'Gazebo', located in Napili. It is on the grounds of the resort area called Napili Shores. Park in the parking lot and walk through the complex down to the ocean and the restaurant is right out on the rocks overlooking the magnificent Pacific ocean. It's built like a Gazebo...hence the name. They only serve breakfast and lunch, but you can get either whenever they are open. My favorite to get there are the Macadamia nut pancakes, with coconut syrup...absolutely to die for delicious! Of course I also have to have the traditional bacon and eggs to go along with the pancakes, and by the time I am done, I am absolutely stuffed as full as I can get!

Although the food is good there, the charm and ambiance of the Gazebo are what make it such a special place. Part of the restaurant is behind louvered windows, but other parts are just wide open to the most beautiful view of the island of Moloka'i that you will ever have. Some days the ocean is calm and the deepest blue you can inagine, but on other days, and especially in the winter months, the ocean is terribly angry and the waves will crash onto the rocks with and unbelievable fury. Napili is located on the northwest part of Maui and this is Oahu's equalivient of the North Shore. The waves don't get quite as big here, but this is where all the best surfers come to catch the big waves. This is also a great place to watch the whales when they come back to Maui in the winter months, and from the Gazebo you can see many of them as they swim, breach and shoot great spouts of water and mist into the air.

The man who owns the place (Jerry), has instigated a few pranks to keep people amused while they eat and enjoy the food. Used to be when all of the camera's had film in them, Jerry would walk up and offer to take your picture. He would pick up your camera off the table and look like he was focusing and composing the picture, and hidden in his hand was a roll of 35 mm film that had been pulled out of the canister, and he would drop the film and canister so it looked like it had fallen out of the camera in his hand. You could see and feel the panic in the poor people who thought the film had fallen out of their camera!

If you ever visit Maui, plan on going there and I guarantee that your experience there will be one that you will treasure forever.

Another place we like to go for lunch or dinner...especially for dinner is the Hula Grill located in Whalers Village, in the heart of Kaanapali Beach. Hula Grill is only one of several good restaurants in Whalers Village. What we like about it is there is and indoor part of the restaurant and an outdoor part. We always go to the outdoor part and when they take you to your table, you will step off the stone walkway and right onto the beach sands of Kaanapali Beach! The tables are actually sitting in the sand and are covered by large palm frond umbrellas to keep the sun off in the daytime, but add to the beach atmosphere at any time. We always make sure we are wearing flip-flops or sandals so we can take them off and push our toes and feet into the sand while we are eating our meal.

Starting late in the afternoon they provide live entertainment that goes into the evening hours until they close. It is always a Hawaiian group, sometimes with hula dancers and sometimes without.

As like all the places on Maui, the food is on the expensive side, but the atmosphere and the fact that you are eating right out with your feet in the sand makes it all worthwhile!

Mahalo for reading...hope it is enjoyable and will be entertaining and useful for you for when you plan your trip to Maui!

Take care,

Ron, the Plant Man

Something Everyone Should Do On Maui

There is one thing that we do almost every time we come to Maui, and that is to go to a show in Lahaina that everyone who comes to Maui should see. It is called the Warren and Annabelle show. Warren is a magician and a comedian and Annabelle is a ghost. Now let me tell you up front that if you are coming to Maui, DON'T wait until you get here to get your tickets or you might be disappointed as the show sells out several weeks in advance almost every night. When you first start planning your trip, go to the website, http://www.warrenandannabelles.com/, and make your reservations before you leave home.

Let me tell you a little bit about the show. Warren Gibson is from South Carolina and is the star of the show. He built the theater in Lahaina just for his show. It is above Ruths Chris Steakhouse on Front Street in Lahaina. When you make your reservations, you can make them for the show only, or a package that includes appetizers and desert before the show and the show tickets. We did that the first time we went and the appetizers and desert were good, but a little expensive, we thought. Now when we go, we get show tickets only, eat dinner before we go, and then go a little early and buy a desert and soft drinks before going in to the show. We usually go to the 7:30 show.

Now, here's the deal, if you go to the 7:30 show and are having the appetizers, they will tell you to come at 7:30. If you are going to the show only they will tell you to come at 8:30, as that is when the Annabelle part of the show starts (more on that later). We usually go at about 8:00 to 8:15, order our desert and enjoy the company and the Annabelle show while eating our delicious desert.

When you arrive, you will be put in a room and will be given a key and Annabelle will give you clues on how to get out. It's a little tricky but fun and believe me, you will get out of the room and you will then be in Annabelle's Parlor. You will be shown to a seating area and can enjoy the food and drinks while you are introduced to Annabelle. As I said earlier, she is a ghost who plays the piano. You just shout out what song you want her to play, and she will play it for you! It's fun and you should be sitting close enough to other people that you can strike up a conversation and enjoy the fun and music.

Finally they will tell you to go into Warren's theater for the show. It's not a large theater and all the seats are good. They will pre-select 4 couples to actually sit down right in the front of the stage and they will be involved in some of Warren's magic tricks....and also be involved in much of Warren's humor!

As I said, Warren is from South Carolina. He loved the Andy Griffith show and so immediately several of the folks on the 'front line' will be called names from the old TV show. He is a good magician and will do several amazing magic tricks, as well as having you holding your sides from laughing at his jokes and interaction with the 'front liners' and other members in the audience. The show is about 2 hours long and believe me, you will laugh for the entire time!

If you want to get involved with Warren, be sure to have with you, a new one hundred dollar bill. At one point he will ask the audience members for the bill, and if you are selected and have the bill, you will be in for the treat of your life! I won't tell anymore about what is done with it as it would spoil the fun, but believe me, you will be totally amazed and have the time of your life to boot!

The show is very funny, and as Warren will tell you at the end, he doesn't believe in using four letter words in his humor. All the stories and jokes are 100% clean, and very funny. They say that you have to be an adult to go, but that is only because alcohol is served before and during the show.

Most of the time when the 7:30 show is over, Warren will greet and shake hands with everyone in attendence, so it is an additional treat to meet him personally and enjoy a brief moment of hospitality with him.

I've told several friends about the show before they went on vacation to Maui, and they have all come back and told me how much they enjoyed the show. Most have said they never laughed so hard in all their lives!

Bonnie and I go almost everytime we are in Maui. The only times we don't go is when Warren is not going to be there. He does take vacaions at various times throughout the year, but when he does, he has substitute magicians in his place, but they are mostly magicians and not the comedians that Warren is.

Thanks for reading, and if you ever go to Maui and see Warren's show, let me know if it's not as good as I've described it here!

Ron, the Plant Man

Maui

Have been in Maui for about a week now and I am still walking around in absolute awe of how beautiful it is here. The weather has been absolutely beautiful. The first few days it was a little warm and humid and there was a fair amount of VOG (Volcanic dust and gases) in the air. It almost obscured the islands of Lana'i and Moloka'i it was so bad, but then the wonderful trade winds kicked in again and cooled down the temperatures and humidity...and blew away the VOG! Maui is such a relaxing place to be in, the people are all so nice and friendly...you meet someone and and in just a few minutes you feel like you have been friends for a lifetime!

We do have friends over here that we have made over the years of visiting, and it has been good to see them again and catch up on what has happened over the past year since we had seen them.

One thing that has happened here is that tourism is way down. We were in Lahaina today and it almost seemed like a ghost town...very few tourists on the sidewalks, shops empty, only a few people in the restaurants, parking very easy to find. All of this is great for us as visitors to the Island, but I feel very sorry for the merchants here who depend on the tourist industry...I certainly hope they can stay solvent until tourism picks up again.

While in Lahaina today, we ate at Cheeseburger In Paradise. If you haven't been here, it is right on the beach and edge of the ocean. There was no problem getting a seat right by the window and looking out over the beautiful blue Pacific Ocean towards the Island of Lana'i. Now if you haven't been here before, you wouldn't know that although we had a window seat, there are no real windows with glass in them...just the openings where glass would normally be, and in Maui you sit there in front of the window opening and enjoy the ocean sounds and breezes blowing in while you eat your meal. Of course the occasional bird will fly in and walk around on the floor looking for crumbs to eat! Only happens in Hawaii, I can imagine the health department would have a coronary on the mainland! We could see small sand crabs darting along the narrow stretch of sand in search of bits of food to eat. Also there was an interesting dog on the beach, sitting there and looking at us. When he got up I could see that he only had 3 legs, but didn't seem to be hindered by the lack of one of his legs! We asked our server about him and she told us his name was Rocky, and belonged to someone who worked next door to the restraunt. She told us that he was waiting for someone to throw him a scrap of food, and she showed us how to make him bark, or speak, for the food!

More evidence of the lack of tourism is at our condo complex. I stood outside our front door and looked down at the parking area the other day and counted 90 parking spaces, but only 37 cars parked in them! Our condo is on the 9th floor and although there is another unit next to us that is occupied, we leave our front door propped open while we are there to let the wonderful fresh island breeze flow through our condo, and not once has anyone passed our door to go to one of the 6 units on the other side of us!

As we were walking around today I told Bonnie that when I go back to the mainland, I forget how absolutely marvelous and beautiful Maui is. When we come back for our vacations, I fall in love with it again and again! We love it so much that it is truly difficult to leave at the end of our vacation...but enough of talking about leaving, Bonnie and I are enjoying to the fullest capacity our days here on Maui.

Most of you know that it is our goal to move to Maui permanantly and just before we left for our vacation, we received some good news from a real estate friend of ours, that the market on the mainland is starting to move back up slowly, so that gives us hope that we might be able to make the move soon! How wonderful it will be when we can call this beautiful paradise our home!

Thanks for reading. Will make another post in a day or so.

Take care,

Ron, the Plant Man on Maui!

Stinky Plant!

About a month or so ago there was a 'big stink' on the news, in the newspaper and so on about a plant growing in a greenhouse at the Huntington Library & Botanic Gardens in San Marino called a "Corpse Flower". There was also one at the Cal State Fullerton Arboretum a few years ago but I understand that the plant died due to someone over watering it! While I was still living in Utah, I think I heard that they also had one at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

These are unique plants that are pollinated by flies and other insects that are attracted to dead meat...so they smell like rotten meat! The big attraction to these plants is that they are very large, and if I'm not mistaken, the flower stalks are about 4 or 5 feet tall! It's funny to watch the news footage on TV because people actually come to see this phenomenon knowing that the plant is going to smell like rotten meat, but when they pass by the plant, they make ugly faces and hold their noses like it is a surprise to them!

When I was still in High School and living in Logan, Utah, one of the favorite stops on the way home from school, was to stop by the Woolworth's store on Main Street. Usually it was to buy candy to eat on the way home, but I always wanted to look at the tropical fish that they sold and also to look in the plant section to see if there was anything new or interesting.

One day I was surprised to find a display of what looked like some sort of a 'bulb' like plant, called a "Voodoo Lilly". I don't remember how much they cost, but being Woolworth's they couldn't have been more than a quarter or 50 cents so I purchased one and took it home. It was sealed in a little plastic bag with a paper label at the top with a photo showing what looked like a little palm tree growing out of the bulb structure. I believe it was labeled with the name Arum cornutum, but is now known as Typhonium venosum. How exciting it was to find such an unusual plant to grow! I can still remember how I hurried home to find a flower pot to plant my treasure in and then placed it in the window over the kitchen sink so it would get some nice morning sun.

As the days passed on I watched every day in anticipation of a new sprout popping out of the bulb. I wasn't dissappointed for very long as in just a week or 10 days, this little greenish/purplish stem started to grow out of the bulb. It was sooooo exciting to see this unusual plant begin to grow!

It grew faily fast, reaching a height of about a foot in just a few short days. It then proceeded to send out a ring of foliage around the top and looked like a little palm tree! The stem or 'trunk' was colored sort of an olive green with purple splotches all along it. It made a very attractive plant sitting in the window above the sink, and all of my family commented on what an unusual plant it was!


I don't remember how long it stayed in the 'palm tree' mode, but at some point I think that around the base of the plant, a new structure started to come up and as it grew, I think the 'palm' like part of the plant started to collapse and die off. The new part that grew up was all dark purple, and looked to be somewhat vase shaped. It also had a central stalk growing up through the middle of the vase. I was in absolute extasy with this marvelous plant that was doing so many unusual things that we didn't expect! This was almost better than Christmas Morning it was so exciting!

One morning I woke up and went into the kitchen and my Mother was very busy up on a stepstool cleaning out the cupboards above the stove. I noticed a faint odor of something spoiled in the air. When I asked my Mother what she was doing, she told me that when she came into the kitchen it smelled strongly of what she thought might be a dead mouse, and that it was probably in one of the cupboards. I noticed that the doors and windows were open to let the fresh air in. About that time my younger brother came into the kitchen and I saw his nose crinkle as he picked up on the fetid smell also. As he went to the kitchen sink to get a glass of water, he commented that he thought the smell was stronger near the sink, and then announced that he thought it was coming from MY remarkable plant! Mother got down from the stool and came over and put her nose in the middle of the plant and disgustingly announced that he was right....THE PLANT DID STINK! I just couldn't believe it, my beautiful plant, my unusual plant that everyone commented on and liked so well just couldn't be putting out that horrible smell! Mother pushed the plant in my direction motioning for me to take a whiff, and I did! What a horrible smell...exactly like a dead animal!

Well, needless to say, my wonderful plant was banned to the outdoors, in fact way out to the far side of the back yard so there would be no chance of the awful smell to find it's way back into the house. Along with that came a stern warning from Mother to never, and she emphasized NEVER to bring a strange plant home again!

I did though....while in college, I found some Fritillaria lilies that I planted in the yard. I had just seen how pretty they were and so I planted some not knowing that they too have an objectionable smell to them....but that will be a story for another time!

Have a good day, and thanks for visiting my blog!

Ron, the Plant Man

Another kind of 'Bird' Story

On Labor Day, most of the family (our kids and grand children) came over for some burgers and hot dogs cooked on the grill, along with Bonnie's delicious potato salad and baked beans.

On the Saturday before the holiday, I was cleaning off the patio and table and chairs a little bit when I noticed that the orange tree looked a little dusty so I proceeded to hose it off just to make it look better. I noticed something moving near the tree but didn't pay much attention to it until a few minutes later when I was closer to the tree and I saw two baby Mourning Doves huddled on the top of the block wall fence that surrounds the yard. They must have been in a nest in the orange tree and my squirting the tree chased them out of the nest!

As the hours and the day went on, the baby Doves seemed perfectly content to sit on the top of the block wall. Mom returned to feed them and didn't seem to be bothered by the fact that they were away from the nest. Throughout the day I noticed that the baby Doves would move along the top of the wall so they could bask in the warm sunshine as the sun moved through the sky.

That evening we were sitting in the living room watching TV with the French doors open to let the cool air into the house when all of a sudden we heard a fluttering noise come into the house. I was half asleep, but Bonnie said that something had come into the house, and Allie, our dog had jumped up and gone to see what it was. About that time something fluttered over our heads and landed on the floor across the room from us...it was one of the baby Doves trying out it's wings! Allie proceeded to chase it and I was trying to call her off and catch the baby Dove before it flew into the wall and hurt itself. After several attempts I was able to catch it and took it outside and set it back up on the top of the wall. I checked on it a few times throughout the evening and it was still there, although the second baby Dove was nowhere in sight.

The next morning I checked on the baby Dove and there they were, both babies sitting next to each other on the fence and I could hear the mother Dove cooing softly away nearby.

They stayed around for about a week and didn't seem to mind when I was working around them in the yard. The mother also didn't mind my presence and she continued to tend to them while I worked in the area. During the night they must have hopped up into the branches of the orange tree as when I would look for them, they were never sitting on the top of the wall after it got dark.

All who came on Labor Day got to see the babies sitting on the wall, and even when Mom came to feed them, a few who were paying attention to them got to see how she would regurgitate the food into their waiting mouths!

It was good to see that our backyard is still a haven for other birds besides the ever present Hummers that are constantly at the feeders hanging out there!

Have a good day, and thanks for reading my posts!

Ron, the Plant Man

The Birth of A Hummingbird

Two links to photos of hummingbird nests, eggs, and the baby Hummers hatching out and then growing to the point of them leaving the nests. Absolutely amazing!

http://community-2.webtv.net/Velpics/HUM/

htpp://community.webtv.net/hotmail.com/verle33/HummingBirdNest

Many thanks to a friend named David, who so kindly found these wonderful links and sent them to me. David is a classmate of my wife, Bonnie, and with whom we are going to travel across country to Alabama, to attend their 45th High School Reunion this year. Thank you David, the photos are absolutely beautiful!

I hope my readers enjoy these links as much as I did!

Ron, the Plant Man

Remembering 9-11

As many of you already know, Bonnie and I had the privilege to go to New York last summer and visit the site where the World Trade Center once stood. What an emotional 2 days it was to walk around the area and still be able to see the massive destruction that had taken place 8 years ago. Our tour guide informed us that even though it is not news anymore, they were still finding pockets of human remains as they are preparing the site for the future monuments to this tragic event. Only a couple of the 11 buildings that were destroyed have been re-built, and in them are beautiful monuments to employees that were killed on that day. Some have some very intricate messages in twined in the construction. One company lost 11 employees and they have a monument that includes a reflecting pool where 11 drops of water fall into he pool every hour to represent the 11 employees. I walked around for hours with tears streaming down my cheeks as I learned of the brave and the innocent people who lost their lives that day. Also little known by most people is that the area is surrounded by many apartment buildings containing thousands of apartments and all of these people who lived there were evacuated from their living quarters...some for as long as 2 or 3 years after all of this happened, and for the most part were not allowed to return to collect any of their belongings, photographs, legal documents, etc. until it could be determined that the buildings were considered to be safe from any damage. Imagine how torn apart their lives were for many months and years!

I hope and pray that we as Americans never forget this day! GOD BLESS AMERICA....WE SURELY NEED IT! Please take the time to carefully go through the photographic collections at the links below and remember the tragic events of that day 8 years ago. And after you do, say a prayer and thank God that you weren't one of those who had to experience this tragedy first hand.

http://www.gcfl.net/911/heroes.php
and
http://www.gcfl.net/911/remember911.php

Ron, the Plant Man