Our Mess of a "Garden"

So, I promised a while ago to upload garden photos... and, well, our garden has gotten rather overgrown since then.  Okay, so it's been overgrown for a while.  Olin and I don't work in it nearly as much as we should, but recently Target has been scheduling us to have afternoons off together, so now we finally have a chance to get some work done!

Our garden is split into two halves: the vegetable garden half, which is surrounded by a fence and completely overgrown, and the tropical plant half.  I like to hang out on the tropical plant side, since all the care it needs is some weeding/vine-chopping every now and then.  I let Olin handle the jungle of a vegetable garden.

Recently, we've been discussing the idea of replacing the vegetable garden with regular old lawn grass. I was hesitant about it because I hate to lose the space for a vegetable garden, and the feet of good soil beneath it!  (Deep soil is pretty rare when you live on a young, volcanic island!)  Still, I kind of warmed up to the idea, so yesterday, Olin endeavored to take down the fence surrounding the vegetable garden.

Here's Olin and the ex-vegetable garden.  Proooobably not one of his better photos, but at least he's rockin' the swim trunks proudly!  I also swear to you that at one point, that square of land had veggies growing in it!

 Oliver saw us hanging out in the yard, so he came to hang out, too.

While I waited for the sun to go down a bit, I took some photos of my half, the tropical plant side!  To be honest, I am a terrible gardener and I have no idea what the plants on my side are called.  Alls I know is that we got this red and green guy from Olin's parents' tropical plant farm!

This one I know the name of!!  We bought at a garden store - it's a "bat plant", and has a beautiful and eerie white and black flower, but ours hasn't been doing so good, and I haven't seen it flower in a while.  Olin built it a little shade hut, so we'll see if it gets better!

 Olin and his new boltcutters vs. the fence!

 The view of our house from behind the vegetable garden.  I love looking at it from here and pretending that nothing else in the world exists except this house!

I forgot to mention that behind both halves of the garden is a ton of warabi ferns leading up to a small stream.  Olin's been working on chopping the ferns down.  Our ultimate goal is to weed all the ferns and vines out and reclaim the lawn all the way down to the stream!  

Sorry, no photos of the stream this time.  Mosquitoes eat me alive down there and I wasn't in my mosquito gear (aka jeans and a jacket).

 All done!  Fence: gone!  Spreading the grass further down: completed!  Oliver: hanging out with some balls!

Hopefully, as summer goes by, we'll be able to do a lot more work in our yard.  I can't wait to turn that giant overgrown pit into lawn grass, although I will miss having a place to grow vegetables.  I feel like if we can set up some patio furniture down there, it'll be worth it.

I keep trying to get Olin to post here, but he pre-ordered Diablo III and has been using all his free time to play it.  He even got the fancy collector's edition with the giant box and the art book and what not.  Maybe I'll make him take photos for you guys.  I'm sure some of you would appreciate the geekery!

Four Year Anniversary

Hello everyone!  I'm happy to announce that yesterday, May 15th 2012, was Olin and my four year anniversary!  Four years is a respectable amount of time for younglings like us, and to celebrate, we went out for breakfast, then took a drive out to Bird Park, the same place we went for our first year anniversary!

Bird Park is a lovely little picnic area in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, but since it's not actually in the National Park, admission is free!

It looked the same, if a little dry!

 Mysterious berries were mysterious.

 Olin investigating little caves.

 For those of you unfamiliar, this flower is called ōʻhiʻa lehua, one of Hawai'i's endemic flower species!  Local folklore says that if you pick one, it'll rain, so I've never picked one!

Bird Park is full of old, fallen over trees.  I'm not sure why, but they're fun to play on!

We found a new addition since we were here last: some charcoal drawings!

...And a name badge.  From an elementary school field trip, maybe?

Since it was just the two of us, we tried to take a photo together with my camera's self-timer... but I was bad at running into place in time.

So I stayed put and Olin did the running.

It's not fair when your boyfriend has longer eyelashes than you, right?

All in all, our day trip was really fun.  And at the risk of sounding mushy, it's hard to believe that it's been four years since Olin and I first started dating!  So much has changed since May 15, 2008 - we've moved houses twice, adopted two cats, started jobs (Hilo Bay Cafe for Olin and Gamestop for me), ended those jobs, and then we both got jobs at Target!  I feel like we've both done a lot of growing up in these four years.  I think our teenage years are officially behind us, and young adulthood is just beginning.

I can say with certainty that at this point in our lives, we both anticipate celebrating many many more anniversaries together!

Olin Gets a Haircut!

Hey guys! I'm so sorry it's been so long - I've been so busy with school and work, and the longer I went without posting here, the more nervous I got about trying to start again.  But I received a very sweet comment from a reader on LiveJournal, and it convinced me that it's worth it to post here again!

The days have been getting longer and hotter here!  One such sunny afternoon, I gave Olin a much needed haircut.  Here are some photos of that! (Sorry they are all Instagram photos, but my dad stole my camera again!)

And so it begins!  (Actually, I'd already cut a lot of the length off at this point!)

Halfway done!

The finished product!  I call it the Tintin look.

I am by no means a barber or hairdresser, but Olin refuses to see one! (He can't justify spending any money on a haircut that he'll grow out in two months - yes, ladies, feel free to eyeroll here.)  And so, the task of cutting his hair has fallen on me, and I've been doing it for the past eight months or so!  I think I do alright?

If any of you out there need to give your men a haircut, the only advice I can give you is: cut vertically, and at an angle so the lower section of hair gets cut shorter than the top section, to give it a more natural blended-look.  Don't ever cut horizontally, or your man (or short-haired lady friend!) will have a big chunk missing that'll be very noticeable!  (Yep, learned this one through experience.)

That's all for now!  Have a great week everyone!

Olin & Kira and lots of animals

It's no secret that Olin and I love animals.  I love furry things and flying things, and he loves creepy-crawlies and big dogs.  So when Olin's friend told us about free baby Jackson chameleons, of course we said yes!

His friend gave us two babies, and Olin made them a home in our giant 40-gallon aquarium tank.  (I know a mesh enclosure is more desirable, but our friend who works at a pet shop - because of course we have a friend who works at a pet shop - said the tank should be okay for now!)  Unfortunately,  one baby figured out how to climb up the seam of the aquarium tank, over the mesh screen we use as a cover, and onto the porch.  I think it fell the 12 or so feet to its death, so now we only have one baby left.

Here he (she?) is on Olin's fingers!

The other night (also on our porch), or roommate Tomus declared, "That's a huge moth!", so Olin and I went to investigate: and it was, indeed, a huge moth.

After a quick Google search, we believe this moth is a Daphnis nerii, a Oleander Hawk Moth!  The green, pink, and purple are ridiculously pretty, right?

Finally, this past Tuesday Olin and I went to the local zoo with our roomies, and here are those photos:

Olin trying to pet Namaste, the resident white tiger, because that's not illegal or anything.

Sorry I haven't been updating much - my ultimate goal is to try to write here at the very least once a week, but midterms and work have been successfully kicking my butt.  On the bright side: SPRING BREAK IS HERE!

I'm going to Oahu tomorrow to visit my mother and brother for three days and four nights, and I think this is the longest amount of time Olin and I will have spent apart in almost three years.  (Is that sad?  That's probably sad.)  I'll try to take some good solo photos while I'm there. Without me around, Olin will have nothing to do, so maybe he'll finally get around to poking in and saying hi here.  A girl can only hope!