Hawaii | The Canary Report

The Christmas Egg

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

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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

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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

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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

A tropical depression, MSC style

Posted on Aug 10, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, MCS, Susie Collins

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I’m not exactly sure when I realized I was in trouble.

Post by Susie Collins.

There’s nothing like a hurricane barreling in your direction to cause havoc with just about everything. No matter how many times the weather service tells you Hurricane Felicia is expected to weaken before land fall, you still have to plan for the worst. You still have to take a look in the food pantry to be sure you’ve plenty of provisions. You still have to worry about your employment if the Internet cable goes out. You still have to wonder about how sturdy the chicken pen and how delicate the spinach starts. You still have to wonder how much wind it would take to whip that tree limb into the electric line. Forty miles per hour? Sixty? How much wind would be too much? How much rain would cause a flood?

To reduce some risk, we spent all day Sunday trimming branches, clearing out ditches, securing potted plants, scrubbing water containers, planning for possible evacuation.

But disaster came anyway, for a different reason. It happened in the front garden when we were trimming back the bamboo from the Internet cable, my husband way up at the top of a wooden ladder lopping shoots, and I hauling off the bundles to the mulch pile. About an hour into the job, our neighbors decided to do their laundry. Only someone with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity understands what this means. Only someone with MCS could understand that a neighbor doing laundry can cause a disaster.

I’m not exactly sure when I realized I was in trouble. Certainly the odor was a clue, that sickening stench of laundry detergent chemicals causing my brain to lurch backwards and my eyes to burn. But exactly how long was it before I actually started to crash? Oh, I remember. It was when the same neighbors started up the BBQ. Yep, that was it, the lighter fluid, hitting my lungs and my brain and my muscles as I lugged a bundle of cut bamboo up the hill. Instantly, it was no longer a hurricane I worried about, it was my own tropical depression.

I barely made it through the rest of the chores, collapsing into bed by 7 o’clock and sleeping for a couple of hours before having enough energy for dinner. I was so sick! Horrible, horrible feeling. Brain not working, body not working, all joy of life gone.

I woke this morning groggy but better. My eyes were still a mess, but I managed to shake off the rest of the aches and pains by the time I started on today’s writing assignments. This evening, Civil Defense is saying Hurricane Felicia is now a tropical storm, quickly deteriorating into a tropical depression herself. She’s wandered north of the Big Island, and will dump some rain on a few of the other islands, but no major problems are expected. As it turned out, she made less problems in my life than my neighbor’s washing machine.

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Tags: Air, Chemicals, Environment, Fragrance, Garden, Hawaii, Home, MCS, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Products, Stink, Toxic

Hawaii’s roadsides routinely sprayed with herbicide

Posted on Jul 09, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Government Regulation, MCS, Susie Collins

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People with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity have reported experiencing dizziness, brain fog, asthma attacks or neurological problems that make it difficult to walk and talk after exposure to roadside herbicides.

Honolulu Weekly reports on The last Roundup: Herbicides are more than just a headache for Hawaii residents.

Reporter Joan Conrow takes a look at the problem of roadside spraying here in Hawaii, using as one of her primary sources a woman with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.

This is a well researched report and Conrow does a good job explaining the problems associated with the ubiquitous use of Roundup herbicide on virtually all our roadways. It can be a nightmare for people with MCS. Not your vision of paradise, is it?

Diane Koerner travels with an oxygen tank in the trunk of her car, all the windows rolled up and the air conditioning on recirculate. The Big Island resident, who suffers from severe Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, takes such precautions because smelling the herbicide Roundup can leave her with a debilitating migraine. And given that chemicals are used to suppress vegetation along nearly every mile of roadway in the Islands, an unpleasant chance encounter is not an unlikely risk.

Koerner is not alone. Other persons with MCS have reported experiencing dizziness, brain fog, asthma attacks or neurological problems that make it difficult to walk and talk after exposure to roadside herbicides. And even those who haven’t been diagnosed with MCS complain of headaches and flu-like symptoms after traveling in areas that have been sprayed. Still others worry about the impact of weed-suppression chemicals on children, pets and the environment.

Link to full report.

Photo credit, a roadside on Kauai that’s been sprayed with Roundup. Virtually all county and state roadsides in Hawaii are lined with an ugly, dead strip of foliage that’s been sprayed with Roundup. As soon as it starts to rebound, workers come along and spray it again. The spraying is done from trucks without much thought to the way the wind is blowing. During application, where the truck moves slowly along the shoulder as the spray is applied, it’s not unusual for the herbicide mist to be floating or blowing all over the road onto and into passing vehicles.

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Tags: Chemicals, Children's Health, Environment, Environmental Health, EPA, Hawaii, MCS, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Pesticides, Policy, Pollution, Stink, Toxic

What’s blooming today?

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

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Spectacular bromiliad welcomes the spring.

bromiliad

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

Toxic vog envelopes the island and my brain

Posted on Apr 20, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Environment, Susie Collins

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When Mother Nature messes with the air

I live on the island of Hawaii, which has a real life active volcano. The current volcanic “event” has been the longest in recorded history, starting back in 1983. Last year, when this photo from space was taken, the emissions, what we call vog, got very toxic with high levels of sulfur dioxide. It knocked me on my arse. I was having trouble breathing, my eyes burned, and the most disturbing thing was that it kicked my Multiple Chemical Sensitivity into high gear so that I couldn’t tolerate anything at any amount without getting sick– the slightest perfume, car exhaust, fumes from new furniture, paint, carpets, the air in stores and supermarkets– I couldn’t handle any of it. But I wasn’t the only one affected; people all over the island have been getting sick, and many agricultural crops have been completely lost near the volcanic region. Many farmers have gone bankrupt.

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Tags: Air, Asthma, Environment, Hawaii, Pollution, Toxic

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

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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

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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

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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

A perfect place to stay in Hawaii: Dragonfly Ranch

Posted on Feb 06, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Media/Videos, Susie Collins

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I stayed here once many years ago. It was magical! What I remember most is taking a shower outside in the garden in the middle of a huge thunderstorm– it was FABULOUS. Now I see the owner has made it even more beautiful.

If you’re looking for a place to stay on the Kona side of the island, I highly recommend Dragonfly Ranch!

On the Kona Coast of Hawaii’s Big Island, the Dragonfly Ranch:

HEALING ARTS RETREAT is a legendary eco-spa that hosts romantic honeymoons, B & B guests and workshops featuring Healthy Pleasures and good FUN: world class diving; respectful snorkleling with friendly dolphin; labyrinth meditation walk; organic garden/food preparation; flower essences for soul development. An authentic Hawaiian double-hulled canoe trip can be arranged.

This legendary luxuriously rustic “treehouse” offers unique indoor/outdoor lodging near the ancient “Place of Sanctuary” called the Pu’uhonua O Honaunau Historical National Park. Here, where Aloha abounds, time is slow and easy.

At the Dragonfly, those looking for a taste of the “real” Hawaii feel at home and welcome.

Link