Pineapple Growth (6 months down)

Ok, so the original purpose of this blog - to grow a pineapple in 2 years and blog about my adventures while documenting the growth of the pineapple - went to shit.  It's mostly laziness.  I have to take the pictures of the pineapples, upload them to my computer, do a write-up, and then upload it to the blog.  This may not sound like a whole lot of effort, but it's enough to deter me.

Anyway, since I accepted a job in Chicago and will be moving back in September (and subsequently changed the countdown), people have surprisingly asked frequently "what about your pineapple?"  Well, there is good news and bad news, I'm afraid.  The good news is that Pineapple #2 is doing very well.  You'll recall that I bought potting soil and planted Pineapple #2 in a bigger pot from the beginning.  This, I predicted, would lead to better growth.  It seems this prediction is coming true.  As you can see from the photos, Pineapple #2 is looking healthy and strong.  The bad news is that Pineapple #1, while alive, does not look as vibrant as Pineapple #2.  Pineapple #1, planted nearly a month before it's companion, looks a little wilted and run down.  I'm not sure why this is the case, but it does not look like it's on the road to bearing fruit any time soon.

Well, without further adoo, here are the updated pictures:

Photo Taken April 24, 2011

Pineapple #2 - Photo Taken April 24, 2011/Planted October 25, 2010

Pineapple #1 - Photo Taken April 24, 2011/Planted October 25, 2010

 Now, as you can see, both pineapples are doing well.  I say they're doing well, but obviously I have no sense of whether that's true or not.  For all I know, they should be bigger, have more leaves, growing buds, or whatever else happens with pineapples.  However, I don't think they're dead, which is always a positive.  For purposes of comparing, you can see the originals below:

Pineapple #2 on October 25, 2010

Pineapple #1 on October 25, 2010 (planted a month before this picture)

Back At It

As some people have pointed out to me, my last triathlon post was several weeks ago.  No, I did not forget to post.  I stopped working out.  Why? Let me tell you.

Moving to a new city is difficult.  Moving to a new state is even more difficult.  Selling all of your belongings, packing your few remaining possessions into storage boxes and suitcases and moving across the Pacific Ocean is an entirely different level of difficulty.  I am a firm believer in radical change and I appreciate the need to experience all of life's many adventures.  I am truly afraid of waking up one day and realizing that I never did anything of note, never saw anything spectacular, and never undertook any uncomfortable endeavors.  That being said, it is still challenging.  Having lived in England, the Dominican Republic, and a number of other U.S. cities, I find that there are a few ways to make the transition slightly easier: (1) join a team sport; (2) find roommates; and (3) develop a routine.

Now, please forgive the analogy, but I am about to compare living in Hawaii to living in prison.  It's all about routine and survival.  I have not personally been to prison, but I watch a lot of MSNBC and I am under the impression that the key to doing one's time is getting into a routine.  In Hawaii, it's very similar.  Survival is not so much about ass raping as it is dodging all the asian female drivers, but my point remains the same.  When that routine is disrupted, it becomes difficult to survive.  Training for a triathlon equally requires a routine.  Unfortunately, when people visit, it becomes difficult to follow that routine.  You go out to eat instead of cooking dinner.  You come home from work and entertain people rather than going to the gym and working out.  On weekends you don't have the opportunity to do laundry, go to the grocery store, run errands, or train for a triathlon because you have to play host.

Don't get me wrong, I love having visitors.  They are an important part of "doing one's time."  As a result, I continue to encourage friends and relatives to visit.  In fact, the last month and a half I have had 4 visitors.  I look forward to having more people visit in the future.  Having visitors forced me to explore different parts of the island, try new restaurants, and enjoy the Hawaiian outdoors.  As you can imagine, though, having four visitors over five weeks has also not been conducive to a rigorous triathlon-training schedule.  Unfortunately, entertaining visitors means that training has to take a backseat.  Well, to all my devoted readers, have no fear.  I am back at it.  I have gone back to the gym the last two days and am training for the triathlon once more.  The triathlon is April 17.  I have 19 days.  The last two days have proven that my month-long "detour" has left me DREADFULLY out of shape, but I am back.  I no longer hope to finish in the top 25 or so, but I should be able to complete the triathlon without stopping.  So that is the new goal: finish without stopping.

Golfing and Eating

Apparently, my friends do not understand what a "comments section" on a blog is used for.  I keep getting text messages that say, "all you ever do is eat and play golf" or "stop writing about golf, i want to hear more interesting things."  I appreciate these comments.  Useful feedback is always welcome.  However, text messages do not tell the world that I have readers.  If you have an opinion you would like to express, I encourage your comments IN THE COMMENT SECTION!

Now, to respond to the non-existent comments, yes, I have been doing an exorbitant amount of blogging about golf lately.  However, I'd like to remind you that it was January and February.  For anyone not familiar with the Chicagoland area, there is no golfing in January and February.  It was crucial that I get in a few rounds.  As for eating, I have been trying to go to as many restaurants and bars as I can before I leave.  Since Hawaii is largely a service economy and everyone here seems to be waiters and waitresses, there are hundreds of places to eat on the island.  I want to know which places to send people when they visit as well as which places to advise them to avoid.

But alas, I aim to please the fans.  I will post more interesting stories.

Pineapple Growth (3 Months Down)

The entire point of this blog was to document the growth of the pineapples sitting on my lanai during the two years I am supposed to be here.  My plan was to update with pictures once a month.  Epic fail.  Anyway, these pictures were taken right when I got back from vacation, so about January 3rd or 4th.  As you can see, their growth slowed down considerably, but I still think they're alive.  You be the judge:

Taken January 3, 2011

Picture Taken January 3, 2011

Picture Taken January 3, 2011

Now, some smartass I know might say, "there is no growth at all, the pineapples are dead."  This is probably because she was too lazy to look back at the beginning stages and compare the pictures.  As a result, below you will find the original pictures from when the pineapples were planted.  If you're curious about the monthly progress (i.e. November/December), you can view those posts here or simply click on the label "Pineapple Project."

Planted October 25, 2010 

Planted October 1, 2010

Planted October 1, 2010

Day 100

I have officially been in Hawaii for 100 days.  Although that doesn't sound like much, it has felt ridiculously long.  Someone suggested the other day...again, not in the comments!...that I talk about what the first 100 days has felt like.  To be honest, I'm not sure yet how I feel about the entire experience.  Obviously I am doing a lot and experiencing a lot of the island culture.  That said, I also miss being close to my friends and family.  Turns out, it's pretty impractical to just fly home for a weekend when you live in Hawaii.  Before I left everyone kept telling me what a tremendous opportunity it was to live out here for a couple years.  "When else will you have the time to live in Hawaii," they said.  I also talked to several lawyers who are well into their careers and they all repeated the same thing, "if I could go back and had the chance to clerk in Hawaii, I would definitely do it."  So alas, I took the leap of faith, sold all my stuff and moved out here with 2 suitcases and no place to live (yeah, I stayed in hotels the first 10 days until I found a place).

I think most of my friends would say that, as a general rule, I hate change.  At the same time, I have a tremendous fear of waking up one day and looking back at a life spent doing nothing.  I can't think of anything worse than being stationary.  Consequently, I tend to seek out new opportunities and adventures and (begrudgingly) welcome radical change.  Hawai'i, while I criticize it sometimes for its ass backwards way of doing things, is proving to be an experience and challenge that I am happy I embraced (begrudgingly, of course).  I've always loved to travel, and I regularly try to figure out ways to get someone to pay me for it.  I also have a few bucket list destinations floating around in my head that I insist will come to fruition one day.  One of the toughest things about moving here, though, was that it seemed like so much more than just a "trip."  1) I'll be far away from friends/family for two years, and 2) I just spent the last 8 years in school preparing for a career that, for all intents and purposes, won't start until I get back.  Selling and packing your life away to move to a new place, to a new part of the world, and leaving everything else behind is a pretty daunting feeling.  I wholeheartedly recommend it.

I recently read two blogs by guys I went to middle school and high school with.  One is teaching English in China for 2 years and the other recently got back from teaching English in China for 2 years and is now a radio broadcaster in Alaska.  I don't know why, but reading about their experiences made me feel much better about being isolated in the middle of the pacific ocean.  I mean, the first thing I realized is that things could obviously be much worse: Being in an entire country of Asians? No, thank you.  Being in a place where temperatures can drop to -50 degrees? I'll pass. At least it's warm here and people speak English.  The second thing is that they helped me remember how young we are.  At some point in the process of moving here I think I forgot that.   Almost everyday I hear about people I went to high school with buying houses, getting married, settling into their careers, etc.  I have no interest in that stuff right now and am nowhere near being ready for it.  Nonetheless, hearing it everyday made me think that here I was finishing law school - the point at which your career is supposed to start - and I up and move to Hawai'i.  It was nice to hear about other people tackling new adventures.  It made me much less crazy.

I know what you may be thinking: uhh...are you complaining about living in Hawaii!?  No, I am not.  Just the opposite, in fact.  I am fully embracing the adventure.  That doesn't mean it's always easy.  Overall, I have been pleasantly surprised by the last 100 days.  Having moved from a big city with plenty to do, I was nervous that I would get bored quickly.  Instead, I have been shocked at how much there is to do here and I look forward to doing even more.

Pineapple Growth (2 Months Down)

Making Progress

The original idea for this blog was to grow my own pineapple from its top and then document the growth as I go through the experience of living and working in Hawaii.  Since it takes two years to grow a pineapple, I figured it would give me a theme to build the blog around.  I said I would post pictures and updates about once a month.  I intended to post around the first of every month.  I'm a few days early, but here is the next round of updates.  If you want to see the last post about these pineapples, and see how much progress they are making, you can view the pictures here.  As you can clearly see, the pineapples aren't dead yet.  They seem to be growing, in fact.  I say "yet" because one of the pineapples has only been growing for a month and the other for 2 months.  It needs to be planted for 24 months.  There is a LONG way to go (see Clerkship Countdown above).

If you watch the video from the previous post, it says that after 2 months you should see some pretty significant growth.  The pineapple on the left, after 2 months, is not as big as I would have expected, but right now I'm just happy it's not dead.  I'm also impatient and really don't think it should take 2 years to grow a damn fruit.  If I weren't stuck on this island for 2 years, I would just go to the store and buy a damn pineapple.  But alas, it is what it is.  Anyway, the stunted growth may actually make sense given the dirt and soil it was planted in.  Instead of using fresh potting soil, I just used the dirt that was already in the pot on my lanai (Hawaiian for "porch").  I did, however, use Miracle Grow potting soil in the other one.  I guess this will be the "experiment in the experiment."  We'll see if it makes a difference.

Picture Taken Nov. 28, 2010 (Planted Oct. 1, 2010)

Because no blog post of mine would be complete without fun facts, here is some interesting trivia about your homegrown pineapple.  The pineapple is native to southern Brazil and Paraguay where wild relatives occur.  It was spread by the Indians up through South and Central America to the West Indies before Columbus arrived.  Columbus found the fruit on the island of Guadaloupe and carried it back to Spain and it was spread around the world on ships that carried it for protection against scurvy (vitamin C deficiency...go ahead, make the pirate sound). The Spanish introduced it into the Philippines and may have taken it to Hawaii and Guam early in the 16th Century.

Picture Taken Nov. 28, 2010 (Planted Oct. 25, 2010)

The pineapple is a member of the bromeliad family.  It is related to Spanish moss and some ornamental plants sold in nurseries.  Spanish moss absorbs water and nutrients from a water-tight reservoir formed where the leaves come together, which allows these plants to draw water and nutrients from sources as random as fog and dust in the air.  The pineapple, however, uses its roots like houseplants with which you are familiar and should be easy to grow if you treat it like a normal houseplant that needs bright light.

How to Grow a Pineapple From Its Top (reminder):

Step 1: Twist crown (leaves) off the top of a fresh pineapple.  Peel off the leaves at the bottom exposing about an inch or two of the crown

Step 2: Soak the crown in water for about 3 days until the roots sprout

Step 3: Plant the Crown in fresh potting soil (water once a week)

Step 4: Trim the dead leaves as the plant grows

Step 5: After about a year, re-plant into a larger pot if necessary


UPDATE:


Someone informed me (instead of commenting, which is the proper way to address blogging issues) that they couldn't see a difference between the first and second posts regarding the growth of the pineapples.  This person also suggested that it was annoying to have to go back to the previous post (despite the simplicity and ease of clicking the link).  So here are two pictures from the earlier post to make it easier.

Picture Taken Oct. 25, 2010 (Planted Oct. 1, 2010)

Picture Taken Oct. 25, 2010 (Planted Oct. 25, 2010)

Ke'ehi Loio

Devoted readers may have noticed that I changed the name of the author.  I did this for a variety of reasons, but primarily because writing behind the veil of anonymity allows me to more candidly discuss things I find interesting, annoying, or ridiculous (i.e. I can bitch about work without people at work knowing it's me).  Sure, my friends and facebook stalkers will know who I am, but they know I'm a pedantic, pontificating lawyer already.  Anyway, Ke'ehi Loio means "Rebel Lawyer" or "Renegade Lawyer" in Hawaiian.

So how did I come up with this Nom de Plume you may be wondering...?  Well, I'll tell you.  In law school, I was on the trial team.  Whenever we had competitions, I had a tendency to go slightly off script in the middle of closing arguments, get fired up, walk around the courtroom, and point to things repeatedly.  This earned me the nickname "renegade."  If you're thinking this is the nerdiest story you have ever heard, you now have a glimpse into the wonderful life of a law student/lawyer.  It's a sad existence.  But it did give me a blog name.

Growing a Pineapple From It's Top

Planted October 1, 2010

Planted October 1, 2010

This weekend I decided to grow a second pineapple.  I discovered a couple problems with the first one.  First of all, I forgot to actually blog about the fact that I planted it.  Sure, I talked about soaking it, but anyone actually paying attention (yea yeah, a stretch, I know...relax), would think the damn thing has been soaking for the last month.  Well, it was planted on October 1st.  That brings me to the second problem.  When I planted the first pineapple, I planted it in old dirt that has been sitting on my lanai (back porch) for the last month.  There were several garden pots already on the lanai when I moved in.  These pots had dirt in them already, and at the time, I didn't have a chance to go get potting soil, so like MacGyver, I just used what was available.  Now, I may not know a whole lot about gardening or planting pineapples, and maybe old dirt that has been caked in clay pots for God-knows-how-long will be fine, but I assume fresh potting soil is better.  The third problem is that I never bothered to take a "before" shot and it's going to be pretty difficult to measure any change without some context.  Well, here are two pictures of the first pineapple (taken 3 weeks later...oops).

This weekend, however, I happened to pass Home Depot and stopped to get potting soil so I could plant a second pineapple.  I assume using potting soil will better promote pineapple growth than old dirt (at least that's what the Miracle Grow bag says and I doubt the fine people at Miracle Grow would deceive me!).  Anyway, since I had plenty of pots, I figured I could compare the second pineapple with the first one.  After all, if I am going to blog about my life in Hawaii as it parallels the growth of a pineapple (I also just considered how ridiculous that sounds when you say it out loud), I wanted to document the pineapples' growth a little more "scientifically."  All this really means is I plan to take pictures every 2-4 weeks and measure the leaves to report any changes (or lack thereof).

Planted October 25, 2010

At present, there are two pineapples growing on my lanai.  The second one (pictured to the left) was planted on October 25, 2010.  Interestingly, I think the first pineapple that was planted has actually grown a little in the last few weeks.  Since I forgot to actually blog about the fact that I planted that one, I guess we'll just have to go with "it looks bigger" (insert 'that's what she said joke here').  The second pineapple is growing in a medium-sized pot that will probably be sufficient throughout the growing process.

Planted October 25, 2010

Now, to give you a better sense of what growing a pineapple entails, I included a YouTube video of a guy going through the process (below).  I watched a few videos and despite this guy's "weird" personality, this was the best one.  Unlike in the video, however, I chose to soak my pineapple for a couple days prior to planting.  Soaking the pineapple stem allows the roots to sprout a little more fully.  I soaked the first pineapple for about a week.  The second one I soaked for only 3 days.

Pineapple Soaking

Ok, so it wasn't as soon as I would have liked, but I finally bought a pineapple and am soaking the crown.  Now, as I mentioned in the first post, I learned how to do this from a 30-minute presentation at the Dole Plantation on the North Shore of Oahu.  The first step in the process is to get a pineapple and twist the leaves of the crown until a little of the stalk is removed.  I then peeled back about an inch or so of the leaves exposing the base of the crown.  You can actually see where the roots will probably develop. There are these small brown-colored bumps below the leaf scars, which are called "root primordia."


Anyway, you then need to fill a medium-sized bowl full of water and soak the base of the crown (the exposed part) for the next couple of days.  The guy doing the presentation said to soak it until you see roots starting to sprout, which he said should be a few days.  However, I looked online and saw that this process could take a couple weeks (changing the water every few days).  So I'll know by the end of the week how long it will take.  So that's it for right now.  The pineapple core is soaking on my kitchen counter.  My roommate saw it, and just looked at me like I was weird.  I suppose I deserved the look.  Not many people have pineapple leaves soaking in water on their kitchen counter.

On a side note, I bought a pineapple corer when I bought the pineapple.  Best infomercial product ever!  Here is a picture of it to the left.  It took me literally 1 minute to get the best parts of the pineapple out of the shell and cut up and stored in a tupperware container.  Actually, looking at the shell afterwards, I got several ideas for cool presentations for dinner parties or Iron Chef Competitions.  The pineapple in Hawaii, by the way, is the best pineapple I've ever had.