My neighbor's property

My neighbor invited me on a tour of their property, yesterday. She took me on her tractor and we drove all around. What a marvelous place!

The property is a long strip of land that goes from below mine all the way to the shared boundary line mauka. It looks strange on the map – like a snake that had one too many gerbils to eat. On the positive side, it has two gorgeous streams (one on each boundary line), and the proximity of the streams has made the banks flatter, making for easy stream access on most of the property.

We left from the makai portion, where the house is located, and rode the tractor up farther and farther. What looks like a tiny property from the house widens up the farther you go. By the time you reach the same altitude as my house, you have a wide ridge to stand on, and quite a distance between the boundary streams.

Most of the land is still not cultivated. As a matter of fact, the plantation is still in its infancy, with pineapple, papaya, lichee, and other plants growing slowly and only in patches. A lot of jungle all over the place, but beautiful gunpowder trees in gullies and a path mowed through the grasses make it look like manicured wilderness. A national park in miniature, maybe.

Contrast that with my property: a huge triangle of nothing, really. The grasses cover the entire property, which used to be sugar cane, then pasture. There are only four trees on the entire land (minus the stream); one teeny palm, one mango tree, a smallish tulip tree, and an undisclosed tree in front of the main entrance, whose standing on what accounts to a little hill indicates just how bad erosion has been.

So, planting is a necessity. I will have to create a mini-jungle of trees, bushes, plants, and I’ll have to tame the grasses. One day, I hope it’ll look like my neighbors’ land.