Buckets and blooms

During the planning stage of this trip, Karen came across a plumeria farm tour at Maui Plumeria Gardens. It is tucked into the foothills of the West Maui Mountains. The tour ($19.10 USD / person) is only offered a few days during the week and sells out quickly. When we arrived at the farm, we were greeted by the owner Doug Brunner.

The tour got started shortly after 10:00am with Doug giving us background information about Maui Plumeria Gardens. The company which has three farms on Maui has been around for twenty five years. They sell their flowers primarily to the lei makers on the island. But they also do a great business selling plumeria cuttings online.

The picking happens every morning. Doug explained that a person can typically pick one thousand flowers an hour, working with both hands and a bucket hanging from the neck. He hires however many pickers a given day’s orders call for, since the flowers need to reach the lei makers by afternoon to leave enough time to string them. A lei takes about fifty flowers, and Doug told us they are tied together with biodegradable dental floss now instead of the nylon thread used in the past. With so many leis ending up tossed into the ocean, the floss made more sense. In the evening, the lei makers head to the restaurants to sell them, starting at $35 a lei with the price dropping as the night goes on.

Once Doug was finished up with what we needed to know about plumeria, it was time to head out to the farm. Every pair of people were given a bucket to fill with whatever flowers you wanted. We spent about forty-five minutes walking amongst the hundreds of plumeria varieties. What I could not believe is how Doug was able to walk right up to any tree and tell us the variety by name, where the name came from and what made that particular flower different from the next one.

While we were walking around, Doug explained how to plant and care for plumeria cuttings and seeds. He was able to show us an actual seed pod and some recently planted seeds. The reason he did that was the everyone receives seeds at the end of the tour to try their hand at growing plumeria at home.

We arrived back to where we started with a bucket of colourful flowers and a new appreciation for the plumeria. Before we left, our flowers were transferred into a box. Doug explained that if we were not going straight home, we needed to keep the flowers cool. So if you were going to a restaurant or a store, don’t leave the flowers in the car. He said that after about ten minutes, you would have a plumeria pancake.

Because we were close to Kahului, we decided to make a Costco run. Darlene and Nana stayed in the car while Karen and I stocked up on food souvenirs .. coffee, chocolate covered macadamia nuts and plan macadamia nuts. We also did the smart thing and gas up the car. Since it was past lunch time, we grabbed some food from the Food Truck Park which is across the street from Costco. This time I stayed in the car while the others grabbed something to eat. I ended up sharing Karen’s fish tacos which were excellent. On the way back to Lahaina, we stopped at Foodland to pick up potatoes and a salad for supper.

When we got back to the condo, it was time for arts and crafts. Every bowl that we could find, was filled with a bit of water and the plumeria. There is an arrangement in every room.

We spent the afternoon relaxing on the lanai, and for supper we did BBQ chicken again. I will never get tired of eating out on a lanai with a Maui sunset as my backdrop.

It was another quiet evening, just sitting and listening to the waves crashing below us.