Holoholo Mauna Kea - and Thanksgiving

Long and winding road -- these are KOA trees with light bark

View of Mauna Kea across the high desert (yes, Hawaii has deserts)

For Thanksgiving, this week we took a lovely drive (holoholo) up the slopes of Mauna Loa. Its mass (from seafloor to top) makes it the largest mountain in the world! The drive is long and winding, but offers an amazing views and a variety of vegetation because of the wide variety of elevations..

The Big Island averages only 85 miles across, but elevation from 0 to 13,800 the results in diverse and dynamic landscape. Hawaii Island has 10 of the 14 world's climate zones offering an outstanding variety of vegetation.

View from about 6500 - Volcano Village in backdrop

Smoke from the 2018 fire on the slopes of Mauna 

Leaving the highway turnoff that's just a few miles form our house, we ventured up to a wonderful outlook at about 6500 feet where we could look down on Kilauea crater and Volcano Village. And, we could estimate the approximate location of our house. (which would be over at the far-far left)

To learn more about this amazing active volcano check out this link: MAUNA LOA

Phil's painting

The year 2018 was full of mother nature's surprises -- East Rift Zone eruption of course, Hurrican Hector, and a huge fire on the slopes of Mauna Loa that destroyed about 2000 acres including large number  of koa and ohia trees and native plants.

"Poop" berries

While we remembered to take the camera and the binoculars, we forgot our plant identification books, but were able to identify several after returning.

One plant in particular was a special find because we found it in our yard after clearing huge pile of plant debris. It is called Kukakenene -- an interesting word. kukake (the gift) KOO-KA-KAY-NAY-NAY

Nene are the official state bird of Hawaii.  Here is a watercolor painting Phil did, with a drop-in photoshop border Lunel added.

Nenes are a beautiful goose that leave "droppings" that look just like the shiny, black berries from this low growing shrub that thrives in this higher elevation.

Nene are closely related to the Canadian goose.. Some scientists believe that the Nene may have evolved from Canada geese that took a wrong turn during migration about half a million years ago. 

Right now, we have purple Iris named "Mauna Loa" in our yard but will also be hoping to find an amazing hybrid called "Mauna Loa Fire" to add to our collection.

WE ARE SO THANKFUL FOR
SO MANY BLESSINGS.

Hale Le'a - House of Gladness

Joe -- who lives around the corner!

Nona Lunel and Joe -- chanting

It's been a month since our last blog, but we have been super busy getting ready for our house blessing and helping to finish up all the building projects that have occupied the last 7-8 months thanks to some wonderful local builders.

A dear friend was conscripted to take photos so we could enjoy our 40+ guests, and two other friends took charge of the vast array of potluck foods and directing people to the self-guided tours of the house, yard and studio.

Mixing rain water and
 salt for blessing

There he is! Happy Guy

Joe Camacho conducted the blessing assisated by Nona Wilson, both of Hawaiian heritage. Much of Joe's blessing was done in the Hawaiian language and during the occasion, we were blessed with a short burst of rain that Joe used, with salt to bless the house and studio, as well as ourselves and guests. Joe and Nona helped Lunel struggle through a chant of thanksgiving Oli Mahalo

We encourage you to -- .listen to this beautiful chant!

These are just a FEW of the cutting we received

Photos above are of the blessing; it was a gathering where old friends and neighbors from Leilani Estates chatted with our new neighbors from our street and elsewhere in Volcano Village.

Not only were four tables full of food, of course people remember that our new yard would need cuttings!

This is an east facing window

Next week is Thanksgiving, and this week last year was when we received word that insurance was going to be paid AND that we had (through other dear friends) secured a place we would eventually call home. In fact, just this week, escrow has closed on our new home.

No, we don't "dive" in -- there are inside steps for us

Finally, we are including a couple photos of the beautiful new lanai, complete with deep cedar hot tub -- just in time for winter at 3500 -- which can be chilly. Although you might think this stained glass window is of Fissure 8 that ultimately destroy our house after it burned, this beautiful window was crafted by local Volcano artists over 20 years ago. We were fortunate to be able to purchase it from the previous owner of a local B&B. (The morning light makes rainbows on the hot tub.)

Give Me COLOR!!

VIREYA (lots of colors)
Hawaiian Rhododendron

Ohia trees surrounded by ferns

"Give me color," she said!

Anyone who know Lunel, knows she is a color-queen!  And, now that our multiple building/construction projects are 90% completed the landscaping is moving ahead. We love our front lot which is full of beautiful ohia trees, so that landscaping area will mostly be ferns and trees.

Yes, we can grow iris!

Royal Poinciana 

However we are developing the lot our home is on which is about 1/3 -- much smaller than the fully landscape one acre we had previously in Leilani Estates B.L. (before lava)

Here are a few images of what we have in mind. All of the images are things we have planted or are in pots waiting. (Of course the photos are of fully grown trees.)

For Lunel's birthday, she asked for cuttings from friends, so many things have been in pots rooting for a few months. We thought being at 3500 feet elevation would limit what we can grow -- NOT SO!  We're amazed at how colorful our new garden will be.

These are just a few!! As the garden develops, we will include more photos! Excited to be seeing the building projects completed -- and best news of all -- escrow closing on our new home in a couple weeks.  MAHALO NUI

Angel Trumpet

Blue Ginger

of course bromeliads!

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)

The "Haysmer Hale Herald" News

After a year of really BIG THINGS it is both comforting and normalizing to be finding joy in small and ordinary things, and to see them not small at all and life as  anything but ordinary. So a blog post about some simple but delightful occurrences in our week.

Birthdays and bananas - dogs and dedications and continuing to turn a house into our new home.

Lunel invited a group of girlfriends for a celebration -- and the cake!!! OMG. It was light fluffy sponge cake with many layers of whipped cream and lilikoi. We shared an outstanding dinner at the "Rim Restaurant" with window seats only a few feet from the edge of Kilauea Volcano. (Yeah, we know that might sound weird to some people, or the fact that we now live in a town called VOLCANO!)  We have always known we were living on "an edge" of a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; we still love it here)

The dog-and-beach photo is one of our beloved Reba-Bo-Beba who is doing very well in her new home. (The trauma of our relocation and stress resulted in some sad dynamics between her our other corgi dogs.) She has been re-homed in Kona and we get periodic updates and are happy she is now doing well.

As for the dedication -- hopefully it is large enough for you to read; if not just click on the photo to enlarge it. A framed copy is hanging on the wall just as you walk into the art studio, dedicating the space to Phil's grandfather and Lunel's dad whose influence in our lives helped shape the people we are today.

AND LOOK GUYS -- we have bananas in our yard. The the flower of one of our many bananas looks totally alien. FYI: Bananas are not trees - technically the plant is an HERB, but the  banana is a fruit. We're lucky to have about 12 of them -- ranging from keiki (baby) size to this over 20' tall.


A nearly unbelievable set of circumstances and the involvement of many people lead us to our charming new home (Hale Le'a) for which we are grateful. It was hard to lose our home, 99% of all our possessions -- but finding this house which included buying all of the previous owners' normal home furnishings, meant essentially moving into someone else's fully-stocked home. It has taken many months, but we are feeling more settled and comfortable. The library and our art collection is gone which means we have been on the hunt for some haysmer-style art.

Part of the excitement these days is the conversion of this (photo) space into what will be a big lanai with a hot tub (where the light blue elliptic is.) We are envisionaries  - the transformation we created with our beautiful Luana home in Leilani Estates we can do again, albeit slower, with the help of our highly competent contractors.  We WILL post the after photos in a few weeks.

Gardening in Hawaii: Before & After (repeat) Before & After

In 2012 when we bought our retirement home in Leilani Estates there was virtually no landscaping and lots of encroaching jungle. Most of the lot was red cinder with little grass. It was a rather large canvas that we managed to turn into an amazing one-acre garden paradise...in six years. The photo below is just one of dozens of beautiful landscaped beds bordered by lava walls Lunel built.





We have been blessed to find a charming home in the little town of Volcano -- famous for its Volcanoes National Park Link to the Park, that is only four miles away. While the former owners kept the house in extremely good condition, they had little interest in landscaping.

Now, over seven years later, the challenge is no longer the fact that we have a new blank canvas, but that our bodies are also seven years older and that changes how we approach landscaping this time around.

After a few days of clearing -- oh, there's the trees!

Where are the trees??

Here, at 3500 feet elevation, there is less "jungle" and more forest, but there are still encroaching invasive plants and vines, and our lovely forest of ohia trees are suffocating with dense undergrowth that needs to be cleared out, as exampled by these two photos -- before and after clearing a small section.

Under debris -- layers of lava you cant see

With three corgi dogs, a fence is a must, particularly as we have a couple of neighborhood cat-visitors who the dogs will chase through the thick underbrush and out the other side. But getting TO the property line to install a fence is quite the feat. Here are a couple of photos of what we (together with some younger capable help) have accomplished so far.

Plants waiting: some gifts, some bought

The edges of the building are of our new studio but the photos show how many feet we have cleared from invasive plants, vines and weeds -- and some really thorny brushes. Temporary dog-fences are in place now and we can begin to imagine what we will be planting. This time around, the emphasis will be on flowering shrubs and less typical "flower beds" (our previous home had over 30 individual beds!)


These are not really "before" photos but show several weeks of hard work. The red lines show how far back we have cleared -- and the true property line is still about 12 feet, leaving a nice natural green barrier between neighboring lots. Under the debris in the photo on the left are beautiful layers of lava which we hope to feature once all the weeds, grasses and roots are cleaned out.

Good thing we are visionaries when it comes to terraforming and will keep the blog updated as we continue our landscaping improvements at Hale Le'a (House of Gladness.)  Stay tuned!

ta DAH!! The Newly Completed Art Studio

Walkway back to the studio

Phil on porch - with Monkey pod round

Front doors

To you faithful blog followers -- here's the moment we have been waiting to share with you.

Although the outside of our new art studio has been completed for a few weeks, it took time to move all of Phil's wood shop equipment inside and arrange shelves full of all of his tool collections. He has a wonderful work table that was a gift from the Macomber family who were our first host home when our home in Leilani Estates was destroyed. Our contractors also made Lunel a work table to her specs. We have installed an efficient Rinnai propane heater that will keep us cozy during Volcano Town's chilly winters.

Here's a photo tour of our new studio on the back of the lot, about 100 feet from the house (same colors, just inverted with some darker accent colors.)

Phil's sitting on the deck in a wicker bench we bought at a garage sale down the street. The amazing tree round is from a giant Monkey pod tree Lunel bought as a gift for Phil which he sanded and varnished. It is over seven feet tall -- and took three contractors to secure it in place at the left entrance to Phil's amazing shop.

Typical Monkey pod tree

Our two spaces are divided not only because of the sawdust, but Phil prefers listening to NPR while Lunel loves singing along to classic rock-n-roll.

Below is a photo taken from Lunel's work table with Phil sitting on the yellow fold-out sleeper. The other is the back wall featuring a 100-year old hand made Tibetan chest and a Thangka of Green Tara.

Single door separates our work space

Views out all the windows are of ohia forest, banana trees and a back yard that will eventually be fully landscaped -- a project that is in process currently -- during this beautiful summer.

Now we can spend time in the studio while our amazing contractors continue to finish up the lanai that will include a new cedar hot tub.