It’s the beginning of November and we have just gone through a hot and humid few months on Maui. We are always grateful for the ocean across the street and the cooling trade winds when they come. The crotons we potted in January are well rooted and growing steadily but still not as quickly as we had hoped. We decided to add some additional privacy screening by putting up some reed fence to the front of the lanai. We are happy how it turned out. We did put the bird feeder dried bush back against the lanai but we can’t see the birds enjoying their sunflower seeds as clearly now. The Hearts and Flowers greenery ground cover has had mixed success covering the outside of the pots. A few have had been fully covered with beautiful green plant while the one next to it is attacked by a fungus or insect that cause the plants to wilt up and die. I am constantly snipping from the healthy ones and replanting in the other pots and looking for natural sprays.

Our bee balm and ageratum plantings looked like some of them might succeed for a while and we had one reach full bloom. However, these starts grown from seeds were not able to survive the Kihei insects or at ground level. The pots with the greenery are enough for now. The side fence by the cottage continues to look good with our tropical foliage. And we do enjoy looking over toward the potted greenery we planted behind Jean and Morley’s house. It is very shaded and it doesn’t grow quickly.

On the lanai we have a few potted ferns and hanging herb baskets. We continue to enjoy morning tea with our gecko friends. They line up in the sun waiting for us to come out with their mango treat. They seemed fine with frozen mango juice after the fresh mango supply was finished. We started referring to the lanai table as ‘the playground’ because any new box or plant or temporary addition on the table has to be explored and climbed all over by our little green friends.Their antics are endlessly entertaining.

Now that the sun is moving south we can enjoy a little sun bath in the cool mornings.