In June 2008, I was given several protea plants for my yard. In each pot of protea was a microscopic bits of green growth. The nurseryman who sold them to my friend said that I could plant them. Jacaranda seeds had fallen into the soil around the protea and had taken root. I carefully put them into little pots and you can see the results above.
By December 2008, here is how they had grown.
Now, a year later, there is more growth, but it is slow.
It is hard to imagine those tiny seedlings becoming one of the huge beautiful jacaranda trees we see all over the place.
Maybe someday I’ll have a couple of gorgeous purple flowering trees to give more color to the gray landscape.
It seems that most large universities, as well as some smaller ones, have a “quad.” When I was a campus minister at University of Arizona, there was a massive quad where students and faculty hung out, played Frisbee, studied, slept, nuzzled with someone special, or whatever else they could find to do.
For an old college instructor like me, being on the quad of any school is thrilling. From the moment I first set foot in a classroom as a teacher, from kindergarten through university, I have loved teaching and being on a campus, being a part of campus life. I think I’d be deliriously happy just hanging out in a university library doing research in musty old tomes.
My visit to Stanford University (guided by a friend who is a Professor Emeritus from the Medical School there) included their quad. He added to my limited knowledge of the campus.
As we approached the main building of the quad, I was drawn to the floral arrangement in the center of the vast lawn.
It wasn’t until I stood a little elevated and distant from the floral arrangement that I realize the flowers created a large “S” for Stanford. I wondered if everyone else who visits miss it at first like I did.
Everything about the Stanford campus has history behind it. A walk along the corridor of the main building takes us back more than a century.
One of the stones on the floor of the corridor commemorated the centennial.
Each graduating class added a stone showing the year. This is the first one, laid by the graduating class of 1892!
You can walk along the corridor and see a class for every single year since then. A nice tradition!
And here is the latest one – for the class of 2009.
One of the pillars shows some of the damage done by the Loma Prieta earthquake of October 17, 1989, almost twenty years ago. You can read more about it here and here.
That last link has excellent pictures and history of the quake, including more information about the World Series that had to be cancelled that day. To read about damage that is more specific to Stanford, go here.
One dominating attraction on the quad is the Memorial Church
This chapel was built by Jane Lathrop Stanford in memory of her husband, Leland Stanford in 1899.
This close-up shows the intricate and exquisite mosaic artwork.
Due to regular church services being held, visitors were not permitted to enter, so I took many shots outside. I loved this sign in several languages.
The courtyard of the chapel offers areas to stroll, rest, meditate.
The jacaranda were in full bloom in the chapel courtyard.
So many tucked away treasures like these side doors of the church.
Every detail was considered, as evidenced by this mosaic floor in the foyer of the chapel.
I have included a slide show below of all photos I took around the chapel, many more than are in this post. Today, I end with a shot of these marvelous sculptures near the chapel. In a few weeks, I will do another post that shows the individual statues and who they represent.
If you read this blog and you are not a resident of Hawai`i, that’s probably what you’ve been wondering. Lilikoi is the Hawai`ian name for Passion Fruit. It has a very distinctive flavor and not everyone likes it the first time they taste it. I think it’s definitely an acquired taste, although it was love at first bite for me.
You can cut it in half, and spoon out the insides with a spoon and eat it, seeds and all. Sometimes I cut up a whole bag of them, scoop out the flesh into a colander and let them drain into a bowl overnight. The juice that results is perfect for making salad dressings, ice cream, jams, or anything else you can think of.
A friend gave me an already established purple lilikoi vine along with some of the yellow lilikoi fruits. I planted the purple vine, ate a few of the yellow ones, and kept the seeds from the rest to plant. The picture above shows the seedlings. I gave some to a friend in Kailua-Kona (where they have a little real soil) and hers are growing like crazy!
I put these seedlings out, poured soil in around them, but some still are not much larger than they are in the picture above. Some of the others are about 8″ tall. It will be a long time before I get enough lilikoi juice to make ice cream.
Another of my other early attempts at trying to grow something at 2300′ elevation in lava was this banana. I’m not quite sure it will make it. But you can see a few leaves trying to push through.
My greatest success has been with the plumeria or frangipani, as it is called in some areas. The smell is delicious and visitors to the island love the scent from their welcoming leis. I have white, pink and yellow right now, and I’m looking for some of the deep reds. They are the simplest to grow. I just move enough rocks to put in some soil, stick in the cuttings, and they take off. This picture shows one of my early plants, flowering in the first season. http://sd1new.net/GardenPages/plumeria.htm
I was given several protea plants. The picture below shows them before I put them in the ground. Unfortunately, the sulfur dioxide got to them and they probably aren’t going to make it.
In each pot of protea was a very tiny bit of green growth. The nurseryman who sold them to my friend said that I could plant them. They were from jacaranda seeds that had fallen into the soil around the protea. I carefully put them into little pots and you can see the results here. Again, I gave some away, and I have two in my yard that seem to be growing nicely. It’s hard to imagine these tiny seedlings becoming one of the huge beautiful jacaranda trees. http://www.floridata.com/ref/J/jaca_acu.cfm
I won’t bore you this time with more of my early attempts at getting things to grow. I plan on doing mostly raised beds for veggies, and a lot of container gardening. (See Janice Crowl’s Container Gardening in Hawaii in the Amazon link on the right.)
Aloha!
Lucy
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