A touch of the tropics

Don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with a ton of vacation pictures (especially since I took very few), but for the one day it wasn't raining I saw some amazing plants, and on the days it was raining (all the others) I saw some amazing wet plants.

A few highlights:

Remember my stick in a pot? Yeah … this is what that was supposed to be. And those flowers before are the payoff. I almost sprung for another one (rooted this time), but then I read that you really can't grow them indoors and have any kind of success without grow lights. Better left to vacations, I guess.

This was on the road to Hana, so basically the rainforest.

This lovely carpet of moss covered every stone bridge.

Getting there was a bit of an issue though. There were record rains for several days and on the morning we were supposed to drive to Hana (on the east coast of Maui) the road was closed for quite some time due to mud slides. The devastation along the road was amazing, and put an end to our hopes of doing some hiking along the way. We didn't realize just how bad the situation was until we came to this area in the road, where bulldozers were still clearing mud. The sides of the road in this area are supposed to be relatively flat.

Ferns grew along all the sides of the cliffs.

This was a path at one of the places we stayed and I love it. The grass was this great cushion that softened these rocks just perfectly. This one is definitely going on my Great Garden Paths board on Pinterest.

The last day the sun came out and we went to the Alli Kula Lavendar Farm. It is definitely on my list of the top 10 most beautiful places I've seen. Several of the paths were washed out and the plants sustained a lot of damage but it was still gorgeous. It is set on the side of the mountain in an area of the island that only gets between 16 and 20 inches of rain a year. It's at about 6,000 feet of elevation and the view was spectacular.

The lavender wasn't blooming yet, but the proteas were. This huge flowers (probably a foot across when they are open) can be found as cut flowers on occasion in our neck the woods but you pay about $15 a stem for them. They were selling them at Alli Kula for $3 a stem. And they were so amazing you get two pictures of them!

In the course of 24 hours we experienced the lush beauty of the rainforest, the dry sun of the beach (and the bathtub-warm waters of the Pacific), the Mediterrean-like climate of the side of the mountain, and the moonscape-like view at the top of the island, where we did a short hike (in thin air) to the top and I showed off my bad vacation hair. Ironically, at 50 degrees up there, it was colder than it was back home in Wisconsin.

Despite the weather we had a wonderful time, and it was even better when we came home and it was spring! OK, so I guess that was a ton. Sorry! I hope at least they weren't boring.