Back in January 2022 I’d decided, with the great input from you folks, to do the 365 Days challenge, posting at least one photo a day for each day, chronicling my year. As you know, I got ‘way behind a lot of times, probably because instead of posting one photo a day, which was my original intent, I ended up posting a lot more than that, which took a lot of time, cropping and editing the photos, typing out captions, etc., and then posting everything. I think I got burned out and discouraged because I couldn’t keep up. I have a fairly busy life to attend to, also.

I am basically a storyteller, really. But I was so busy posting daily photos that I didn’t have time to post about our various road trips (witness the fact that I never did finish our autumn drive up the mountain from a year and a half ago!). I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I want to do with this blog this year, and I think that I’m going to cut down on the number of 365 Days photos I’ve been doing for the past three years, and concentrate more on storytelling, if you can call it that. I’m still going to work in the Daily Hummingbird, though, and I still want to chronicle each day, but on a smaller scale.

So without further adieu…

When I checked my older posts, one thing that I found interesting was this post about how our food deliveries started out ‘way back in March 2020, during Covid. Wowzie. Almost five years we’ve been doing this! There are some days that it’s really hard to get up early and days when I’m really tired after all my deliveries, but at the end of the day, I’m grateful that I can help others.

Here are more photos from the first five days of the month:

On January 3rd, I took Nolemana for his retinology appointment in Lake Oswego. As usual, I waited in the car, knitting, while he was inside. I was happy to get a photo of these crows.

The sun came out and was shining behind us on our way home, and I just knew that we’d be seeing a rainbow at some point. By the time we got to Damascus, it was just appearing, and I knew just the photo I had in mind. I hustled as fast as I could to get there. We kept exclaiming how bright and beautiful the rainbow was; I can’t remember a time when I’d seen one like this, reaching across the entire sky from north to south. When we got to Olson Farms’ farm stand, it was raining pretty hard, but because no way would I let that stop me, I hopped out of the car and got this amazing photo…and it was a double rainbow, too! I didn’t care how wet I was getting at that point!

I love that the pumpkin cut-out was smiling, too. I got even wetter and took this video:

Oh, you guys…this ʻānuenue… it was so incredibly beautiful! Lehopulu is the name for this earth-clinging rainbow. I wish my camera could’ve captured just how brilliant it was. I just stood there in the rain, thanking ke Akua (God) that I was able to witness such moments of beauty. I ordered a copy of the top photo for the Olsons and will frame it and give it to them.

Reluctantly, we headed home; the rainbow was beginning to fade and I had to get Nolemana home. But I did stop to take this photo, looking over Sunshine Valley towards our house. This photo better captures the brightness of the rainbow. I can’t remember a time where I’ve seen the ends of a rainbow. I must admit to being just small kine breathless at the wonder of it all.

I’m still in awe that we got to see it. I hope you folks enjoy it, too.