Mother's Day, 2025

On Mother's Day we had flowers delivered to my 101-year-old mother-in-law. Helen is a marvel. She is fully mobile, lives at home with one of her daughters, and texts us regularly about her day.

She wants for nothing material and is satisfied just hearing from us. I'm old school and like writing her physical letters. She says that she likes to re-read them, which one rarely does with electronic communications.

Happy Mother's Day, and many more.

They Aren't Forget-Me-Nots

Yesterday I couldn't remember the name of this flower that's been blooming in our yard for over 20 years. Refusing to do an internet search, I wanted to see when the name would come back to me. This morning, after six hours of sleep, the answer came instantaneously: nasturtiums.

Such lapses now come about once a month--well within "normal" and not necessarily a sign of impending dementia--yet I have come to realize that I could have taken better care of my brain when I was middle-aged:

More scientists are looking for clues in the midlife brain because efforts to target dementia in older people have largely failed, says Ahmad Hariri, a professor of psychology and neuroscience also at Duke...

Parts of the brain start to change faster during middle age, especially the hippocampus, which is important for remembering everyday events, says Sebastian Dohm-Hansen, a doctoral student at University College Cork in Ireland and first author of a March review study on brain aging published in the journal Trends in Neurosciences.

In your 40s and 50s, the white matter in your brain—the connections between brain areas—decreases in volume, says Dohm-Hansen. That likely results in slower processing speed, which could have further effects on cognition, he says.

In addition, proteins can build up in your blood, resulting in low-grade inflammation that can affect the hippocampus’s ability to encode and store new information, he says.

People keep their verbal language-based skills their whole life, says Moffitt. But the speed at which you process information and your capacity to solve new problems of logic and reasoning gradually diminishes with age...

There are no guaranteed ways to prevent dementia. But steps that help both your brain and your heart include exercising regularly, eating a healthy diet, and not smoking, as well as trying to avoid getting or managing conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol, and obesity, and treating obstructive sleep apnea...

Also important is staying socially and mentally active and engaged, [Mayo Clinic Dr. David] Knopman says. “There are benefits of working in a challenging environment—it stimulates the brain—and it seems to be associated with better outcomes,” he says.

It's too late for me but maybe not for you, dear reader. Save yourself!

Planting Lilies

A month of rain has washed the drought away.

The downside: weeds have sprung up in all the bare patches and flower beds.

The rain stopped from Sunday to Wednesday. It was a window that enabled this homeowner to start the refurbishment.

They're not Easter lilies, but calla lilies are a nice-looking substitute.

Signs of Life

The bulb is on a window sill

The flowers opened on the amaryllis bulb shortly after Christmas. When the petals faded, we pinched off the flowers before they began to seed.

To our surprise (it was our first amaryllis, a gift), the bulb grew another stalk and bloomed again, two weeks in advance of Easter.

Green is everywhere after the heavy rains.

Most people have doffed their masks.

Signs of new life are everywhere.

Patty's Floral Designs

The florist in her workshop

In my recent trip to Honolulu I had a late request from California HQ to get some flowers for a friend's birthday. The arrangement should be tropical and not Mainland (roses, carnations) themed. I called Patty, whom I had never met but who had delivered flowers for us over the years.

Context: it was Saturday afternoon, and the flowers had to be delivered Sunday when her store and messenger services were closed.

She said that she could put something together but that I had to pick up the flowers at closing and deliver them the next day. No problem, but after peppering her with questions about overnight storage, I sensed that she didn't quite trust this brown-thumbed delivery person with her pulchritudinous product.

And so it was that I showed up at her store just before noon on Sunday, when Patty was working on weddings in the back room. The delivery went smoothly.

California HQ complained about Patty's cost (over $100) and said that I should have checked out other florists on Saturday.

The complaints stopped when the recipient called to express her happiness over not only the gift but also the manager's effectiveness in getting an employee to work on his Hawaiian vacation. It looks like I get to keep my job.

Mother's Day, 2022

We called a Honolulu florist to deliver identical arrangements to our mothers on Mother's Day.

The local blooms are especially colorful. During the formative years I didn't think much of them--birds of paradise, protea, ginger, anthuriums--but their scarcity on the Mainland, the passage of time, and personal regrets at--dare one say it?--not stopping to smell the flowers, has caused my appreciation to grow.

Later we called the moms, and unlike previous years, had no difficulty getting through. COVID-19 has abbreviated all in-person visits, and the extreme elderly hardly ever go to restaurants. Having already entertained visitors, the moms were rested and ready to socialize again.

Hi, Mom. Happy Mother's Day! Love you....

May Day, 2022

Waikiki Elementary May Day, 1980 (Star Advertiser)

The Lei Day celebration returns to Kapiolani Park:

This year, the 94th Lei Day Celebration returns after a cancellation in 2020 and virtual celebration in 2021. The free festival will take place from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. this Sunday at the Queen Kapiʻolani Park in Waikīkī.

...Lei Day has a fascinating history. The day originated from an idea by poet Don Blanding in the 1920s.

Blanding thought there should be a designated day celebrating the beauty and significance of lei in Hawaiʻi. Blanding discussed his idea with “Honolulu Star-Bulletin” columnist Grace Tower Warren. She suggested that Lei Day should fall on May Day, creating the popular and catchy phrase, “May Day is Lei Day.” The first Lei Day celebration was held in Honolulu on May 1, 1928. Since then, numerous festivals have been established throughout the state to celebrate the uniquely Hawaiian holiday.

As I've said before, I much prefer the Hawaiian May Day to the Marxist version that commemorates worker uprisings. Flowers universally bring smiles, while upraised fists bring...I'll be polite and just say pluses and minuses.

May Day, 2021

(HVB photo)

May Day festivities in Hawaii were cancelled last year, but--can you feel it?--there are signs of revival everywhere. Schools, churches, and other groups are having virtual celebrations, and vaccinated families and friends are having low-key gatherings.

There will be flower leis made, given, and received this year, many more than 2020 but not as many as 2022.

Your humble blogger prefers Hawaii's May Day to the Marxist version. To me receiving a lei with a kiss is more worthwhile than marching with a raised fist, but however you choose to spend it, dear reader, have a wonderful May Day.

Forever

The roses are still going strong five days after Valentine's Day--in fact, they look better.

If I were a poet, I'd write something about how love matures and can become more luminous over time.

Eventually the petals fall, but by then the underlying beauty will have been revealed, and that it is what we retain in our memories.

The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.
------Isaiah 40:8

Happy Valentine's Day from the City That Knows How

Flowers for sale at the Ocean Ave. Whole Foods.

Last month we noted how San Francisco D.A. Chesa Boudin's solution to auto break-ins is to help victims replace broken windows more cheaply. Marginally "helpful" though it is, his proposal doesn't apply to us non-San Franciscans. Of course, he will have to add staff to administer his program:

The $1.5 million in the office’s new budget includes money to pay for two victim advocates to process claims from people whose vehicles are registered in San Francisco.

Needing to run a couple of errands in the City, I drove my 16-year-old weather-beaten Camry, not the one-year-old SUV. Paranoia runs strong in my family.

Happy Valentine's Day from the City that knows how.

Cactus Flower

February 8, 2020 

The night-blooming cereus is one of the few landmarks that hadn't changed. I passed by the rock wall and hedge a couple of times a week for nine years during the Sixties. The cereus is never in bloom during the carnival, but one can't have everything.

June through October is when it puts on its show, with the flowers beginning to open in the late afternoon, and wilting as day breaks.

(stevendn.smugmug.com image)

They truly are splendid - twenty-five or so centimeters of fragrant, creamy white petals with a yellow center....The story is that it was brought to Honolulu by Charles Brewer, the first mate on the Ivanhoe, who had picked it from Mexico en route to Hawaii. He gave a cutting of it to Sybil Bingham, who planted it around the Punahou campus in the 1830's. Today the hedge on the lava rock wall of the campus is over three hundred meters long, and brings many admirers when it blossoms.

I came to see the carnival, but a few minutes alone in the shadows with my memories were the best part of the evening.

Puakenikeni

The puakenikeni is a fast-growing tree that produces fragrant white flowers popular in leis. It's seen in many Island neighborhoods.

My friend picked puakenikeni flowers from his backyard and left them for us at the front desk in two gold containers. Over the remainder of our trip we watched the flowers turn from white to yellow to orange. The best presents are the unexpected ones.