Halau Hula Olana: Kumu Olana & Howad Ai 

"Mele No Kaho'olawe"

This year, the Merrie Monarch Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary. The Festival is dedicated to the memory of King David Kalakaua, who was also known as the Merrie Monarch. He restored many of the nearly extinct cultural traditions of the Hawaiian people, especially the hula which had not been practiced publicly for many years. Ancient Hawaiians had no written language. Chants and hula recorded Hawaiian genealogy, mythology, and prayers of the heart and mind. The hula was the means by which the culture, history, stories, and almost every aspect of Hawaiian life were expressed and passed down through generations.

We wish to thank KFVE for their appreciation of the Merrie Monarch Festival and their efforts to begin a new tradition in hula by sponsoring a legacy tree for each participant and kumu in the hula competition. We hope each year family members will honor their sons and daughters by sponsoring a legacy tree which will be planted in the Merrie Monarch Forest. 

             From The Field          

Darrell Fox, COO        

 You can almost hear the trees and understory  shrubs singing on their ride to find their pair. "You for me and me for you... Two for tea and tree for two..Can't you see how happy we would be together". 

As we put the final touches on the current planting, we take a moment to reflect on all that has been accomplished. It is hard to believe that we have already covered over 500 acres with more than 200,000 koa trees. In addition, we are tucking supplemental trees in the more challenging natural terrain features that we found through our GIS mapping system.  Using this system, we have identified places to plant other native plants that help complete the ecosystem.  The approach we are taking is to first concentrate on sandalwood trees.  Sandalwood takes much more time in the nursery than koa.  Because sandalwood is hemi-parasitic sandalwood must be paired up with a suitable host plant both in the nursery and ultimately in the field.  We have found that koa is a near perfect long term host.  Out-planting in between established koa legacy trees allows this relationship to develop.  In the nursery we take the approach of raising the sandalwood with a range of native understory shrubs.  These include plants such as the Hawaiian mint, kukainene and ko'oko'olau.  These nursery and intermediate host plants ultimately become part of the native ecosystem.  This is a long term commitment to identify sites for the full range of native species that were once part of the koa forests of Mauna Kea.  As the koa establishes itself, the gaps become sites for these understory plants.  The goal is to perfect the timing; introducing each component as the support system is sufficiently developed to foster its survival.

During the month of May we will move in to seed collection and our periodic fertilization schedule.  The visual survey of our select mother trees has suggested that this well be a very good year for seed collection.  Fall saw heavy flowering and winter saw a flurry of juvenile seed pods.  Now these pods have ripened and are starting to dry.  Review of the best of our planted trees has given us a short list of the best of our mother trees.  This will allow us to weight the collection to trees with the best proven offspring.  It is impossible to know what that means for 20 years from now, but we can know what mother trees produce the best saplings in the 3-4 year time frame.  Soon it will be possible to collect seeds from these saplings and select further for desirable characteristics.

dfox@hawaiianlegacyhardwoods.com 

Urban living gives you brain fatigue. It flat out makes your brain tired of constantly being alert and aware. And a walk in the park can go a long way to clear up the resulting fuzziness.

I like how Fast Company explains it: "Pedestrians get drained because they have to remain vigilant of all the madness that's around them, being forced to use directed mental attention--a limited resource--to get from one block to another without being run over by something with two legs or four wheels. In contrast, the environs of a park, unless there's a stroller festival afoot, can put you into a state of soft fascination,the aaaaah-inducing feeling of taking in the space around you. By being in a green space, that ever-so-scarce resource of directed attention is able to renew itself."

A new study from Scotland helps to prove this. New York Times writes that researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh used portable EEGs to monitor the brain activity of 12 healthy young adults. Different participants walked through different areas of Edinburgh -- one was an historic shopping district, one was a park-like setting, and one was a busy commercial district.

You can guess which walkers were the least stressed and frustrated -- those in the park. While this is a small study, it still helps to underscore what we already intuitively know. We relax in quiet, natural settings much more than we do (or ever could) in urban settings.

Jenny Roe, a lecturer at Heriot-Watt's School of the Built Environment, who oversaw the study, told the New York Times that while natural setting still engage our brain, the engagement is effortless: "It's called involuntary attention in psychology. It holds our attention while at the same time allowing scope for reflection."

From the New York Times: 

The study suggests that, right about now, you should consider "taking a break from work," Dr. Roe said, and "going for a walk in a green space or just sitting, or even viewing green spaces from your office window." This is not unproductive lollygagging, Dr. Roe helpfully assured us. "It is likely to have a restorative effect and help with attention fatigue and stress recovery."

It's certainly worth taking a walk in a quiet park yourself to test out this theory and see if you're calmer and more clear-headed when you return home.