There’s Snow Business Like Shoe Business

There’s Snow Business Like Shoe Business was Originally Posted on March 6, 2012 by lavarock

We had “Kona Snow” the other day. This is unlike the actual snow we get up on the Mauna Kea summit which can be inches to feet deep.

Kona snow is the overnight blossoming of the coffee trees which causes you to think that a heavy snow happened overnight, covering the branches.

These are my neighbors trees because they were closer to the house than mine are. It had started to sprinkle and my fear was that the delicate flowers could disappear soon.

The aroma of the coffee blossoms is similar to cherry blossoms and that sweet perfume wafts across the neighborhood for a few days until the blossoms fall off. Another smell somewhat similar is from macadeamia nuts. Those two smells are pretty easy to tell apart; the coffee blossom smell is a bit sweeter.

When I work in the field, I wear boots for a number of reasons. I work with a weed wacker and often have a saw blade mounted rather than the strings. I hate the strings because they don’t work well with the little shrubs that grow between the trees. Because I am pretty hard on boots, I am often looking for something better than I have. The boots
get wet and soon the sole comes off the boots because they are just glued on. Most shoes nowadays are glued together and sewed shoes or boots are harder to find. There is a version of boot available at Walmart with a “Goodyear Weld” which appears to be folded, sewed and glued. However the top of the shiow is suede and not what I think would be great for getting wet. There are some work boots that have steel toes and I’m not sure they would be that comfortable while I am on my knees pruning. I bought some hiking boots online that had zippers for easy access and they worked well for a while, until the straps that held the boots together at the top of the zipper, came off. The velcro fasteners are on the inner sides of the boots meaning that if you walk and your feet get too close together, the straps touch each other and unfasten. When they did not put them on the other side of the boots is beyond me.

I will again investigate hiking boots, perhaps at somewhere like Sports Authority locally will have something. I see very few mans shoes or boots at Target. I have exhaused Walmart and K-Mart and think that Macys may be out of my price range; my price range being cheap.

Tonight is the monthly Kona Web party and I will be taking my grill and hotdogs. I noticed that many early signups said they were bringing deserts so I opted for a main dish. Photos of eachb picnic are uploaded the day after the first Tuesday of the month at KonaWeb.Com/together. If you ever plan a trip to the Big Island’s Kona side, try to make be here on the 1st Tuesday of the month and come join us. That would be a new experience for you.