August Newsletter
- Theodore Bennett
- Aug 1
- 2 min read
Aloha Everyone!
LFA (Little Fire Ant) ALERT
We are dealing with Little Fire Ants here. And, not sure that we can ensure no LFA goes out from our nursery, we are canceling our Summer Sale and Potluck that was set for August 14 and 15. We are treating with Tango that sterilizes the queens, but it takes time for the ants to die naturally. We encourage you, wherever you are, to set a perimeter and test for these ants. Do a peanut butter (creamy Skippy) test around your house, garden, trees and property. For a thorough understanding of LFA, go to Hawaii Ant Lab website: https://littlefireants.com/
Skyler Torres, an old student of mine, is helping with the process of knocking the LFA back. During summer, it requires a Tango application every four weeks. We will let you know the latest as things progress, but, because of their small size and slow movements, going forward, we will be required to enforce a (Skippy) quarantine of at least one hour for each tree and plant leaving this place.
As a community, we are developing a Garden Team that will collaborate to encourage individual gardens, homesteads and farms to grow. This will be in the way of helping someone complete a project or move forward in their next step. Our first Garden Team project is scheduled for Sunday August 16 at Packy and Kris’s place in Ranchos. Stay tuned. This grew out of our meetings at the Naalehu Library on Making the Garden More Permanent and Developing a Farm or Orchard. If you would like to participate, let me know.
Our mural painting on July 25 yielded an enigmatic and energetic group. We celebrated David Davis’s 78th birthday and David and Joni Davis’s 47th Anniversary. It was a treat. And the mural grew, particularly in the West where Jack Kinkelaar used the light of the full moon to highlight Moku’aikaua Church, Hulihe’e Palace and a canoe lodge. The Moku’aikaua Church is particularly important to the story that this mural is trying to tell, because it was there that my father, John Bennett, took a walk while my mother napped in the hotel room before a flight home. There, he ran into a friend from back home and he asked him, “Joe, do you know anyone selling land here on the island?” No was the answer. But my father, ever optimistic, replied, “If you do, would you let me know?” Three months later, my Dad received a call from that man and the result of that call and chance encounter at the iconic Moku’aikaua Church was this land where I live today.
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