The Canary Report

Bob the Nurse’s visit to Hawaii

Posted on Jan 09, 2010 by Susie Collins in Blog, Keith Carlson, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

Fun with a male nurse action figure with too much time on his hands.

I can’t believe I never told you about Bob the Nurse coming to visit me in Hawaii last summer. The Adventures of Bob the Nurse is the creation of Canary Report contributor Keith Carlson. Bob travels around the country visiting and indulging in the local culture in such diverse places as Arkansas, Georgia, Florida and Hawaii, just to name a few.

In addition to taking a canoe voyage in one of my ponds (above), Bob also got lei’d, helped out the chicks, went fishing, stood in awe of the Buddha, and took naps.

Take a look at two full pages of Bob’s Hawaiian vacay here and here. I do hope he’ll come visit again soon!

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Tags: Humor

The Christmas Egg

Posted on Dec 26, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

This is Betty, our new hen, a Rhode Island Red I was given by my neighbor. This is her first egg she laid after coming to live with us (not actually on Christmas Day, it was a couple weeks ago, but I just couldn’t resist the play on words). We were all so excited! After a bit of a rocky start when she first arrived– she picked on my littlest bantie, chased all the wild birds out of the gardens, pooped all over everything (and so named Betty Poop), and would not go to bed at night in the coops– she’s now all settled in, getting along perfectly with everyone else, ignores all the wild birds, snuggles in at night right alongside the others on the roost, and now gives us an egg a day. She still poops gigantic poops all over everything, but we love Betty!

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Tags: Garden, Hawaii, Healthy Living, Organic, Photography

My Solstice

Posted on Dec 21, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

Happy Solstice!

I spent Solstice evening in the garden, puttering around, taking photos and planting a bed of vegetables and flowers (you can see the seed packets on one of the slides). After the series of storms that blew through here over the weekend, the evening was calm and peaceful, barely a whisper of a breeze. The melodious laughing thrushes sang and sang from the bamboo. It was one of those perfect evenings in the gardens.

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Tags: Fresh Air Photos, Garden, Hawaii, Healthy Living, Leisure, Organic, Photography

Susie’s Secret Garden: Ponds, chickens and vegetables

Posted on Oct 10, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

Some photos from my garden. I love harvesting fresh greens each night right before dinner!


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Tags: Food, Garden, Hawaii, Home, Organic

Summer Solstice report on the new veggie garden

Posted on Jun 27, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Home & Garden, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

This week, the week of the Summer Solstice, I wanted to show you our progress on the vegetable garden.

As you may recall, we started building this garden last year on Winter Solstice, constructing the raised beds and filling with compost. Then we built the fence while the compost broke down and turned into fabulous medium for the vegetables. So here’s where we are this week!

All four beds are filled with layers of compost, soil, leaves and other organic matter, and then topped with a layer of straw to keep down the weeds and keep the soil moist in the hot sun. The straw all sprouted wheat for a couple of weeks, that was a HUGE LOL. The straw is supposed to keep the weeds down, but it started growing it’s own crop! Now we give batches of the straw to the chickens in their run and let them eat all the seeds before spreading on the beds.

I really love the fence because it keeps the chickens out. Later, we are going to cover the whole enclosure with avian netting to keep the wild birds out so we can grow sunflowers. The netting will also keep out the fluttery moths that lay their eggs on the leafy greens.

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Tags: Food, Garden, Healthy Living, Nontoxic, Organic

More adventures in veggie gardening

Posted on May 31, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

Time to plant!

It’s been awhile since I updated you on the new veggie garden. For those of you who missed it, we started building a serious organic veggie garden with raised beds on Winter Solstice last year. In February, we filled up the beds, right on top of the lawn, with compost layered with straw and banana leaves. Then we let the beds “cook” during the rainy season; the moisture and warmth broke it all down, creating a perfect, nutrient rich soil.

So here’s where we are now:

We fenced in the whole garden. The gate is still to be built. The main purpose of the fence is to keep the chickens out. The salad buffet is closed!

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Tags: Food, Garden, Healthy Living, Nontoxic, Organic

What’s blooming today?

Posted on May 17, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

Spectacular bromiliad welcomes the spring.

My gardens are exploding with blooms as the weather warms up and the sun comes out. It was a long, wet and chilly winter, and all living things are happy for spring!

Look at this spectacular bromiliad! We got this plant about 15 years ago as a sucker, about 4 inches high. This is its first bloom, and to give you some perspective on how big it is, that fence in the background is four feet high. I had to get up on a ladder to get the photo. So this bromiliad is gigantic, and blooming in a gigantically AMAZING way!

It started the flowering process about a month ago by sending up that pillar out of the center top, which then began unfurling the individual blooms last week. At left is what it looked like before it started blooming.

It’s not unusual for bromiliads of this size to bloom only once in 10, 12, 15 or even 25 years, so it’s very exciting! I can see it from my office windows, nestled there in the red heleconia, which is doing some amazing things itself.

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Tags: Garden, Hawaii, Organic

Where day and night meet

Posted on Apr 17, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Media/Videos, Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

Susie’s Secret Garden

Yesterday morning at about 9:00 a.m., as the night water lily at left was closing, the day water lily at right had just fully opened. Each bloom opens and closes with the cycle of day and night for about three days. There’s a nontoxic black dye in the water for algae control, it really sets off the colors of the blooms and leaves. The variegated leaves belong to the day lily, and the solid reddish to the night. I mixed up the varieties in the same pots this year so they’d come up close together like this. I call it pond art.

Tending my ponds is one of my survival techniques for dealing with my Mulitple Chemical Sensitivity. Even when recovering from an exposure, when I get outside and putter with the ponds– prune plants, feed the fish, change the water– I feel so much better about life and my place in it. I hope you, too, have an activity in your life that helps you stay connected to nature and at peace with yourself and the world. xoxo

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Tags: Garden, Hawaii, Leisure, MCS, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Organic, Organic Gardening, Photography, Water

What’s in bloom today?

Posted on Mar 15, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

My garden is full of red and white blooms:

Passion Flower

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Tags: Garden, Hawaii, Leisure, Organic

Building a raised bed on top of the lawn

Posted on Feb 20, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Home & Garden, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

Time to get serious about building a veggie garden

Last week, I posted a video of Scott Meyer, editor at Organic Gardening Magazine, giving step-by-step instructions for creating a new garden bed on top of a lawn. The timing of finding the video couldn’t have been more perfect for me because we are currently building a fenced-in veggie garden that will have four 4X8-foot raised beds.

The technique of building up the soil directly on your existing lawn is a fantastic way to build a veggie bed because 1) it’s less work not having to dig out the grass, and 2) it allows you to keep the nutritious top soil in place.

So here’s the process of layering in banana leaves, soil, compost and hay– kind of like lasagna!

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Tags: Food, Garden, Hawaii, Health, Healthy Living, Organic, Organic Gardening

Canary candy: Susie’s secret garden

Posted on Jan 25, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Home & Garden, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

This past week, The Canary Report was full of serious reports about chemicals and environmental health, so I thought I would lighten things up this Sunday morning with some canary candy. Here are some photos taken during the past week of things in my life that keep me sane and happy:

Lucy, incredulous that I am holding Katie and Jolie’s eggs rather than fruit-filled cookies that she could eat.

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Tags: Garden, Hawaii, Leisure, Organic

Susie’s secret garden: Building the entrance pond

Posted on Jan 04, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Leisure, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

The last post was so depressing that I wanted give you some Canary Candy. Here’s a timelapse series of photos on building our front entrance pond. We did this in December of 2007.

You can visit my YouTube channel to see my other vids, and also all the myriad favorites I’ve collected on YouTube on Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, organic gardening, pesticides, meditation, silly humor, etc, etc, etc. I found one last night with two cats talking to each other that is one big huge LOL.

Love you guys. Stay safe out there! xoxo

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Tags: Garden, Hawaii, Leisure, Organic, Video

Beautiful rainstorm washes away firecracker smoke

Posted on Jan 01, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Environment, Media/Videos, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

I made this video in my backyard at about 5:00 p.m. today when the rain returned and washed away all the toxic firecracker smoke. This is the time of day when I put the chickens to bed, feed the fish, and close everything up in the back for the night.

After I came in the house, this rain turned into a huge, thunderous storm with blinding lightening and earth shaking thunder. I felt thrilled and in awe of the power of nature to cleanse and recharge the earth. I take it as a good and auspicious omen at the start of 2009.

Happy New Year!

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Tags: Air, Fresh Air Photos, Garden, Healthy Living, Organic, Video

And the rain came down!

Posted on Dec 26, 2008 by Susie Collins in Blog, Leisure, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

RAIN!!

We are having a huge rainstorm today! It’s been about 62 degrees all day and we’ve had at least 10 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. Tonight we have thunder and lightening with a flash flood advisory. It’s been very dry for months and months so we almost forgot that we live in a rainforest! It feels like such a blessing.

The rain washed the air and made it so fresh and clean! I walked around outside with an umbrella several times today just to breathe in the beautiful air. Above is a photo out the back door of the downpour against the avocado tree.

Here I am all comfy cozy in the house today with the first fire of the season. Before you start wondering about how I can be around a fire with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity: I close up all the windows on that side of the house and vent the windows on the far side, burn only natural wood (kiawe, a type of dense mesquite we harvested on the island of Molokai), and fully open the stove vent when I put in a new log so that all the smoke gets sucked up the chimney and doesn’t escape into the room. I brought the wood burning stove in from the mainland (Lopi), it’s one of the most fuel efficient on the market, and generates a lot of heat with very little fuel. It dries out the house beautifully and keeps the mold away. If I ever had to, I could cook on it. It’s also makes things very cozy on a wet, chilly day like today!

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Tags: Air, Garden, Healthy Living, MCS, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

Mele Kalikimaka!

Posted on Dec 25, 2008 by Susie Collins in Blog, Leisure, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

Despite my being a Grinchess about Christmas, the universe gave me two beautiful gifts on Christmas Eve: I discovered that my hen Katie had laid an egg (the first in months since the girls went on what I thought was going to be a total winter vacay), and then during my evening walk at the park, I found a majiro bird nest. Majiros, also called White Eye, are a teeny-tiny green bird, and they make teeny-tiny nests into which they deposit two teeny-tiny eggs. I don’t know how they are ever successful at keeping the babies inside, and they are often blown down out of the trees when it’s windy. I am a collector of nests, so it was treasure. Here’s a (silly) composite of my gifts.

Mele Kalikimaka to me!

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Tags: Air, Garden, Leisure