To Everything There Is A Season

One of the spacious carports -- beginning rock walls

...even for catching up our blog followers with the latest month of news. (Can't believe it's been over a month since our last blog update.)

From Ecclesiastics come the the words:
To everything there is a season...and
a time to every purpose under heaven..
a time to cast away stones, and
a time to gather stones together.

For over a year we've been "casting away stones"... from the lava/stones that changed our lives too suddenly and dramatically last year.

Now, both figuratively and literally, we are gathering stones together.

Things are moving quickly on the building projects and beginning landscaping. As our regular blog followers know, the art studio was completed many weeks ago; we are both spending happy times there.

Next came the carports: Completing both of the new carports meant also providing large spaces to work even if it is raining.

New table -- without the 3 leaves

Sheetrock done

The purchase of this house included all the furniture -- except a large dining room table. We've known what we wanted -- something solidly classic in wood, with leaves to expand space for dinner parties. We began what we expected would be a long search, but found the perfect table on our second stop!!

Work on the lanai (just off the back porch) began in earnest in September: framing in the space, exterior walls first, then windows, drywall inside, texture and painting. We have beautiful tiles for the floor and assembly has even begun on our new cedar hot tub.

Carving first on Monkeypod wood

Lanai walls textured and painted -
 Phil inspects the extra deep tub

Phil has been continuing his new art direction -- carving and painting -- similar to those we shared on our July 1st blog entry. The one pictured here is of the 'Apapane bird - an endemic Hawaiian honeycreeper who drinks the nectar from the lehua blossoms of our ohia tree forest that surrounds our home. They live in packs and their lovely songs echo in the forest. Their crimson feathers were once used to adorn capes, helmets and leis of the Hawaiian nobility.

Adding color

A time to gather stones together!!

Lunel still works on pages in her journals, but is spending more and more time in the yard; it's a whole new big canvas for her, but her approach this time will be tempered by wiser maintenance choices -- more trees and flowering shrubs -- less weeding.

One of her projects is utilizing the beautiful chunks of lava our excavator dug up for electricity and water to the art studio as well as clearing spaces for the two new carports.

During September we also sold and bought a different truck -- one day! Our contractor needed a new work truck and friends in Leilani just happened to be selling theirs. Even though we planned to eventually replace the older work truck -- we were pleasantly surprised when it all came together so easily.

Although cooler seasonal fall weather is slowing coming, we still have many bright sunny days with temperatures between 70-80 and we both are enjoying it. Nice that the lanai and hot tub will be done before winter season!
(yes, we DO have 'winter' here in Volcano, Hawaii -- at 3500 elevation)

Thinking Outside the Box

"Instead of thinking outside the box get rid of the box."
                                                         (Deepak Chopra)

This has to be one of the main reasons we love PUNATICS so much!!  The challenges of living in Puna on the Big Island are of many shapes; most folks on the Continent have no real idea of the learning curve involved when you decide to "move to Hawaii."   It's not all palm trees and white beaches.  Here in Puna life is remote and rural and the terrain is diverse, ranging from full forest to dense jungle.  The people who live here are fiercely independent creative problem solvers.

So, when *SHIT* happens, there's always an opportunity to learn what went wrong, and how to find a "work around" that will solve the problem.  And most often, it does require THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX.

Master & Commander of Parts

Such was the case when the heater on our hot tub died.  Of course we were annoyed, but we had to admit the our electric bill was high.  So, together with our amazing contractor Rob (who is known for getting rid of the box) we came up with a better solution.

Boldly going....

We purchased 500 feet of black heavy-duty irrigation hose which was hauled up onto the roof and strapped in place to utilize passive SOLAR. We found a small, efficient, quiet pump on line to move the water through the pipes. Using a simple garden timer, next we measure the time it takes to heat the water in the black hose so that it periodically flows into our hot tub.  (As a back up for cloud-cast winter days, we have installed a small propane on-demand heater.)

By also adding a couple batteries to our existing solar system, we can now operate all our most expensive equipment through our solar set-up -- including water pump, tub, and refrigerator!!  Net result will cut our electric bill in HALF!

Shit happened -- AND we got to think of a better way to do it!

Imagine it!

Imaginary construct of us in our new Great Northern Hot Tub....soon!

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.”  Gloria Steinem

 

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.” Carl Sagan 

 
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”   Terry Pratchett

When we returned home from our visit in February of 2012, we admit to some degree of terror; we had just bought a house on the Big Island of Hawaii -- and we still owned a home in Eureka -- and a 22 year old successful gallery business.  "Oh Shit," doesn't even cover it.  What we saw here, when we made the offer on this house was "potential" not just the house itself -- it was as though the house was a symbol for what we might envision.  Perhaps we had individually thought about what our retirement might look like, but we had not talked about it seriously until our Big Island visit in 2011, and after a year of research we were ready to "imagine it."  Suddenly, the outline of it was there -- in our face -- in the shape of this house.  If you've visited our blog at all, you know much of what we have accomplished in 18 months.   Now we begin the last phase of our creative endeavor. 

This week the materials arrived for construction of a 12x24' lanai on the north side of our house.  The photo is an imaginative construct of us -- in our new hot tub.   As the project begins this week, we will, of course, include some photos of the on-going process -- which we believe will be completed for Lunel's BIRTHDAY mid-August.

"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."  John Lennon

"Why not go out on a limb?  Isn't that where the fruit is?  Frank Scully