After graduating from Punahou School, May married Charles M. Neal and the two had their only child, Peggy. May was determined that Peggy attend Punahou, and she started a jam and jelly business, "Hawaii Maid," in 1937 to help finance her daughter's education. They lived in a small camp house in the Woodlawn area where May tended a huge garden, including an Isabella grapevine from which she would make jelly, lime trees, two huge avocado trees and nioi or miniature red Hawaiian chili peppers. She made pineapple pickles "that the kids would kill for," recalled Peggy, and a divine red pepper jelly that would "blow your socks off."

She and Peggy would drive out to Wahiawa, where there was a huge strawberry guava patch, and they would pick those and make jelly. They made mango chutney "by the gallon jar." And they would go to Chinatown and the River Street markets and buy sugar in 100-pound gunny sacks: "You know, that lovely old-fashioned kind of brown sugar with the lumps that you can't get anymore?" recalled Peggy.

May learned how to weave lauhala to create her own fancy gift boxes (the boxes were manufactured on Moloka'i after her handmade samples), an innovative packaging idea at the time.

But after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, "no more sugar, no more jars, no more, no more nothing," recounted Peggy. During the war, May grew a huge and productive victory garden. She had two huge avocado trees, a row of limes, a big Ponderosa lemon and even ducks. They ate duck eggs and shared them.

Restaurateur Peter Canlis was a good friend, and May would share her bounty with him for the Army-Navy YMCA cafeteria. Canlis had sent his wife and two young children to the Mainland when war broke out and so was "baching it." He would hang out in May's kitchen, whipping up a batch of his famous garlic prawns with the shells on, Peggy recalled.

Charles Neal got into the real estate business in 1942 but suffered a heart attack in 1943, so May got her broker's license and the business became known as Neal and Neal. May worked downtown in the real estate business with her husband and then for Walter Dillingham for a few years. Neal died in 1949 and shortly after, May married her longtime friend W.W. Goodale Moir.

They first met in 1944 through May's friend Louise Rogers, one of the first women Realtors in Hawai'i. The friendship blossomed through their mutual enthusiasm for orchids. Goodale Moir was a local-born, Cornell-educated sugar physiologist, but his true passion was orchids. He grew and hybridized them and was among the first to make intergeneric orchid hybrids. He was also a keen student of microclimates and their effects on plants.

May had a huge orchid greenhouse in Manoa. and she and Goodale belonged to the orchid society; together they helped put on orchid shows at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

The Moir wedding was in the Moir Cactus Garden in Po'ipu, Kaua'i. The garden was Goodale's creation, and was cared for and maintained by his brother Hector and his wife, "Sandi" (Alexandra Liliko'i Knudsen).

The newlyweds moved into Goodale's Nu'uanu home and began to explore the world together in search of new plants for Hawai'i. In 1950, May became a flower-arranging protegé of Carolyn Peterson at the academy of arts. She became the head volunteer floral decorator, performing the job with dedication, flair and style for more than 50 years, as director George Ellis recalled in a speech this year.>May was responsible for all of the academy's famed arrangements (except ikebana), including the two huge stands in the entry courtyard, and for special-event floral sculptures. She would plan her designs, check in her garden and those of her friends, and go in every Monday with masses of subtropical garden bounty. She would check on the keeping condition on Thursday or Friday and refresh and recut as needed. May also was good at communicating with the academy's gardeners and shared her practical methods of gardening as well as her sense of design and aesthetics.

The Moirs are responsible for introducing many of the wonderful plants that now grow in Hawai'i gardens. They also had friends who brought in unique and new plants and the Moir garden, "Lipolani," in Nu'uanu, was often the first place they were grown.

The tall, golden yellow Heliconia caribaea was discovered by May in the Dominican Republic, when the Moirs were orchid collecting.

Dracaena draco, the dragon tree, was brought in by Harold Lyon, the first director of Foster Botanical Garden, for whom the Lyon Arboretum is named. Lyon had five precious seeds, and he gave several to May who nurtured them, shared some seedlings and kept one magnificent specimen for Lipolani. This tree was a perfect setting for orchids, and the leaves are striking in floral decorations.

May's style of gardening was beautiful as well as functional. It was hard to give her a plant because she had such exacting standards. Orchids were great gifts, of course. Flowers and foliage that could be used in magnificent arrangements also were acceptable. She liked to grow herbs and edibles, especially if they were beautiful and arrangeable. In later years, she favored native Hawaiian plants and added select ones to her landscape.

Goodale Moir had selected their house lot back when Dowsett Highlands was a brand-new unbuilt subdivision, with grassy slopes and a few scattered ti plants and wind-whipped trees. He selected a pointy lot at the Y-junction of two streets because it had the best trade wind flow. He was a strong believer in the flow of breezes and their favorable effect on plant growth and health. He built a "puka puka" wall to protect the garden from the full force of the Nu'uanu trades while allowing for good air circulation.

A dendrobium orchid cultivar, D. "May Neal," was bred by Goodale and named after his wife. Its parents are Den Phaleonopsis crossed with D. tokai to make D. Hawaii, which then was crossed with D. schulleri to make D. "May Neal." Many hybrid dendrobiums were then produced by enthusiastic breeders.

Scott Mitamura, orchid horticulturist for the Honolulu Botanical Gardens, did a search in the orchid database and found many orchids named after May Moir, including Spathoglottis "May Moir," registered in 1950 by Lyon (a wedding present??) and at least five others.

For years, the garden was full of orchids and had a traditional lawn. Then in the '50s, the orchid stem borer reached Hawai'i. In the process of cleaning out dead and diseased plants, the Moirs did a major garden renovation, eliminating the grass and replacing it with concrete pavers and basalt stepping stones.

New introductions joined heritage plants such as the Madeira rose, which came all the way from Portugal. Goodale's mother had been given a cutting by a Portuguese neighbor on the Big Island. May grew it in a flower and herb courtyard, near a streetlight, to protect it from rose beetles. This courtyard also is where an 'a'ali'i, a green rose, a purple cup and saucer plant, and a golden yellow one, rosemary and basil were grown.

The Moirs both wrote books. May edited Goodale's technical orchid research works, and she wrote a few of her own as well. The books reflect Moir's personal style: They are simple, practical slim works. They share the facts, weave in a few stories and give straightforward advice on how to arrange flowers and improve their keeping quality, how to garden in the seasons of the Islands, with a few recipes sprinkled in. They are: "Flower Sculpture: A Handbook" (Topgallant, 1977) and "The Garden Watcher" (Lyon Arboretum/

UH Press, 1983) In the months before her health deteriorated, she was working on a new book with several of her gardening protegés — Leland Miyano, Linny Morris-Cunningham and me. Her mind was still sharp to the end, yet her body was wearing her down. "After all dear, I am 93," she would say in her matter-of-fact, spare-worded way.loha, May, and a hui hou!