I'm back home, after spending a week vacationing in Hawaii with Steve and my friend Gretchen. She has a beautiful home near Kailua-Kona on the Big Island, with lush tropical plants surrounding it. I enjoyed exploring her yard and chasing little green lizards around, while taking photos of the delightful shapes and colors of foliage and flowers. All the pictures in this week's post were captured there.

As with last year's trip to Maui, I got to daydreaming about gardening in the islands, even though I'm unlikely to relocate, at least not anytime soon. There are quite a few different climates. In the Kona area, on the drier side of the island, I saw a sufficient variety of flowers, fruit trees and vegetable plants to keep a gardener interested and challenged. But the “jungle” of USDA hardiness zone 12b near Hilo (where we visited Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden) could be even more of an adventure, since plants seem to grow huge with little effort, due to rich soil and frequent precipitation, although all that rain could get gloomy after a while.

I wanted to identify the plants I photographed, so found these sites helpful: Costa Farms Plantfinder and Eye of the Lady Horticultural Library. I learned about some I'd like to try in our California coastal climate (perhaps as houseplants during the colder months, such as the plumeria that I grew from seed, soon to be moved from a windowsill to the outdoors). Crotons (Codiaeum), anthuriums, and passion flowers could be good bets.

Back home in my own humble garden, our neighbor Karl-Heinz thankfully watered plants at least once while we were on vacation. I was happy to see that the watering globes seemed to help, as well as mulch placed over bare soil in smaller pots to delay evaporation.

Next week this blog will return to an account of growing progress around here. After that, I'll create a special edition post of Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden photos.