Tubes and Craters and Cones -- OH MY!!

Real place, real people, but photoshoped artistry

The District of Puna (where we live on the Big Island) is riddled with volcanic features and activity. If you are a regular blog follower, you’ve already read several entries about Kilauea’s Pu’u O’o vent, flowing continuously for over 30 years. But flowing lava is just part of the volcanic story. ("click" on any image for bigger view.)

For example, the entire district has massive, hollow, miles-long lava tubes running underground. Access to these happens when a layer collapses forming a puka (hole) in the surface. They may be great for spelunkers but are not so great for stray pets…some return, but some never find their way back home. Our friends across the street had a puka so large they had to put a chain link fence around it to keep their dogs safe!

Map shows our house and our two friends houses (notice Geothermal Plant -- on the edge of another big crater

A recent Easter Party with friends prompted this blog entry and a little talk-story about craters within walking distance from us. Although there are many such, we are talking about three that are about 2-3 miles from our house in Leilani Estates Subdivision. Our friends live about a mile due east from us where the yard in front of their house features a currently operating steam vent. We joke that at least they have the option of building a sweat lodge or a unit that will produce poached eggs. If you look at the map you can see there are craters directly behind them.

Google Earth closer up - our house on left - friends' houses closer to craters

Another friend, another mile east, actually built his house on the edge of a crater. We have visited his house and walked along the edge of this crater, which at its widest is about 100 m. Scientists believe that this crater, called Pu`ulena Crater (Yellow Hill,) was formed by the collapse of a series of three smaller pit craters with steam-driven explosive eruptions that blanketed the area with rock debris as thick as 20 m.

As the two craters on either end of Pu’ulena are Kahuwai (Water Master) and Pawai (Water Container) it is further thought that an explosive eruption probably took place when ascending magma encountered perched groundwater or a hydrothermal reservoir. After this event the ground may have collapsed due to the subsequent withdrawal of magma forming what is now an elongated crater. This explosive activity occurred 450-700 years ago. (Above info gleaned from variety of sources including: USGS, Hawaii Dept of Land and Natural Resources, Hawaii Volcano HVO Hawaii Volcano Observatory, Google Earth.

This week -- Hawaiian GEOMETRY!

We had a couple projects this week that turned out well for "first-timers" on both counts. After moving to Pahoa on the Big Island, we planted bananas -- seems everyone does. We just had our first harvest! It took us a while to figure out why this particular banana is so much greener and bigger than the others -- but we finally realized it is because it is only a few feet from our compost bins! 

Here's a photo of Puna Harvester Phil and another that illustrates how bananas (like many many plants on the island) grow in a spiral! Spirals are prevalent throughout nature and artistically used in ethnic, religion and mythology around the world to represent the universal pattern of growth and evolution. The spiral represents eternity and continuity, rebirth, and the eternal. 

So THERE's our SPIRALS... and now on to our CIRCLES and SQUARES

Phil wasn't the only one having fun with geometry. Lunel (with the help of our two corgi girls (Reba and Lani) undertook to create a cover for our hot tub. It was an idea that arrived (as many do) at 3am, so despite some of the details being a little unclear, it was drawn out first. We bought a 6 x 8 foot length of bamboo fencing. After tracing the circle on it, each bamboo piece had to be cut by hand. There was fabric left from making our beautiful swag ceiling in the lanai, to hem and use to weave across the bamboo. Last, the rough edges were sanded, it was rolled out onto the round hot tub.  Hmmmm...so are triangles next?

Easter -- "Puna Style"

Phil's feather boa, wild turkey claw and baby.

Happy Easter -- New life and rising from the dead were themes we chose for our Easter Bonnets this year.

Lunel's "life and death" themed hat

Last year at our annual "white elephant" gift exchange on Christmas Eve, Phil's exchange gift was a lovely feather boa...perfect for re-purposing at Easter! Lunel simply used what was out laying around the studio to decorate, but couldn't resist her usual bemusing play with iconic image of life and death.

So, later we will be gathering with lots of our friends and neighbors (our ohana) for a potluck, talk-story, games, music and....Easter hat competition. We'll be meeting at friends Jane and Doug who have been building their house here in Leilani, just a few blocks from our house.

A Zen Riddle

Giving Yellow a Bad Rap!!

Is it possible to yell-o quietly?

For well over a year now, we have been convinced that the colors YELLOW and ORANGE have been getting a bad rap.  Yellow has turned into "yelling" and Orange feels like "rage" And, it has only gotten worse since the end of 2016. We have decided to counteract the negative influence of our Cheeto-Headed President with our own personal beautification campaign here in Puna on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Us in the Mellow Yellow Submarine

Although there are admittedly more serious ways to engage politically (which we encourage,) this week we chose simply to focus on the BEAUTY of YELLOW and ORANGE that we have planted in our yard. As we have created beds around the property, for whatever reason (and sometimes for none at all) each of them has a name.

"Cosmic Dancer" is in the upper right corner

For example, we have the "Valentine Bed" because we built it together on Valentines day a couple years ago. There is a "Pink Bed" that began primarily with pink flowers, but since has been enlivened by other colors as well. There is the "Monarch Bed," the "Bromeliad Hill, "The Terraces," and even one named "Kate's Bed" because it was planted mostly by our friend and yard helper, Kate.


Until recently, there was a bed with no name -- until, that is, the hibiscus we planted there went into full bloom along with all the other yellows and oranges that are featured there. The name of this hybrid hibiscus is "Cosmic Dancer" and thus the name "Cosmic Dancer Bed."

We have two YELLOW ohia trees in our yard and one surprised us last week by bursting out with little yellow
pom-poms all over it. Despite the fact that we have had over 20 of our forest ohia trees die in three years, many are still alive and healthy, so this lovely, rare yellow ohia is a particular joy.

Breakfast at the "Mango Table"

The east-facing window on lanai 

"MANGO TABLE" --highly recommended stop in Puna on the Big Island" -- Not only do you have a beautiful view, service is excellent and fare is yummy and includes fresh fruit, vegies and juices from the estate, mini cranberry scones with pecans, fresh coffee just to mention a few. Be sure to schedule a leisurely visit to the "Mango Table" at the Haysmer Estate just south of Pahoa. 

As we were enjoying breakfast the other morning out on the lanai, we were remembering what this view looked like when we moved in. So, it was fun to scrounge through the old photos from February 2012 when we first saw the property.

Whirling galaxies collide in the dense mango burl

First of all the lanai was something we decided to build onto the existing house and is complete with wicker furniture, lots of plants and art, and of course, our cedar hot tub at the other end.

The mango table, however, has its own interesting story: After Hurricane Iselle a few years ago, a dear friend had a fund raiser to help her repair her badly damaged roof. This five foot slab of mango was one left over from another friend (on our street) who had just finished building her new home. We bid on it -- and after taking it home, Phil worked his magic on it to bring out all the glorious details of the mango burl.

Pictured below with three composite photos are views of our east side property 2012 and now.

No grass, no landscaping, no lava beds -- just dry red cinder and a bucket for compost: What potential!!

This photo is exactly what we see out the window, taken four years later, after a lot of hard work.

**** - Just to clarify (for blog visitors who may not know) the "Mango Table" is a private residence, not open to the public, but generally a great meeting place for any and all of our friends and ohana.

Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder

Beauty, as they say, is in the eyes of the beholders. Phil is continuing his exploration into creating winged beings, and having had good success with his butterfly (from a few posts ago - 3/2) he has just completed a moth that was inspired by one of our local moths. The wings are made from a beautifully patterned piece of koa that he carefully sliced in half to get the mirrored wing pattern; the body is from redwood, one of the few remaining pieces we brought with us from Humboldt County.

"Black Witch Moth"
(Ascalapho Odocata)
"CLICK" to enlarge

Here in Puna, on the Big Island, of course Phil has many different woods to chose from. And, while Phil's completed work is obviously beautiful -- one of the projects Lunel has recently chosen is full of beautiful potential.

One acre is 43,560 square feet, and of those square feet, approximately 85% of it has been "beautified" over the course of the last 4.5 years. That includes about 1,000 feet of boundary around the acre, and it is those edges that have been the most challenging because of the dense under-story of the forest, most of which is infested with various junk shrubs and invasive vines. But, since deconstruction is one of Lunel's favorite art passions, the tools for this "art project" include chain saw, machete, pick ax and the indispensable o'o bar.. and that is not where we go "pau hana"** - it a heavy, thick iron bar over 6' long used to break up lava. .

Before work began -- What's in there?

Ugly but full of potential beauty (Lunel says)

So....a couple weeks ago she attempted a initial excavation, without knowing what was under and/or behind an area about  12 x 10' along the south perimeter. The first photo shows the area before work began.The additional photos are anything but "beautiful" except to Lunel who seems to have no limit to her ability to both envision as well as manifest beauty using a wide range of materials.


Plans are to use this natural basin area to create either a fountain, or perhaps a waterfall. Nearby, about 30 plants, many from our ohana neighbors and friends** are waiting in pots for replanting around the water feature. (Mahalo Barbara, Geoff, Bett, Karin, Sam...and others)

OK, so maybe you can't see a fountain or a pond... (YET)

Many kinds of ti, anthuriums & ferns

Sort of like this, but only time and more creativity will tell.

We are including one photo that shows some of the potential we see, but of course the final version will be different.)  Stay tuned -- more news at 11.)

(** First, there IS a real Bar named "The O'O Bar" -- it's a Hawaiian thing. And, "pau hana" means the end-of-work, or -- a time when you might go TO a bar. (??lost in translation i think...??) 

If You Rest You Rust

Rainfall where we live - 140+

Rust is! When we lived near the coast in Eureka, California, the dampness, rain and fog were a given; and for 20 years or so we made garden art from all our rusty tools. Emily, the woman who bought our charming Victorian home, got a kick out of all the rusty shovels, rakes and trowels adorning the weathered fence. For many years I loved using rusty items in many of my quirky assemblage pieces.

While there are places on the Big Island of Hawaii that get only a few inches of rain annually, the district of Puna is not one of them. As you can see from the rain map, we get a lot of rain. (see note below **)Fortunately, our elevation and distance from the ocean places us where our rain falls mostly at night. But that rain, coupled with the terra-forming projects we have done in the past 4 1/2 years have been hard on all our tools.

Our 1st rusty wheelbarrow
now holds iris

Still working (sort of) after many
reinforcements and repairs 

We inherited a rusty push-power mower that we ran until it fell apart, but have since bought a second and a third mower (the last has power-wheels.) This last week we realized we have gone through FOUR wheelbarrows and THREE mowers. Just last week Phil purchased weed eater number THREE. Since we had great discount coupons at ACE Hardware, we also purchased shovel number FOUR as well. (All in just four years.)

Ready to work in La-VA LAND!!

This news may raise an eyebrow or two back on the Continent, but for most people living in the Puna District on the Big Island, this would be par for the course here in LA-VA LAND!!

And speaking of LAVA, below is a link to a short video taken TODAY (3/6) of the lava flow.  And a reminder to our friends "over there" -- this lava, only a few miles away, has been flowing non-stop for 30 years.  (Mahalo to Big Island News, Tropical Visions Video and to Paradise Helicopters.)
Click link: VIDEO OF TODAY's LAVA FLOW

** SO, we must be in some kind of DENIAL to wrote we "get lots of rain" - or wishful thinking as we are in a drought -- right here, right now. In fact the weather report stated the last time the first quarter of the year was this dry was -- 1948!!!  (the year i was born...oh shit!!)

Flutter By Butterfly

PULELEHUA (Butterfly in Hawaiian)

Sometimes Phil is having so much fun down in his tool-packed wood-work-shop I don't see him for hours...and then, I'll be walking by with a load of lava, or cinder, or green waste and he'll call out for me to "come see."  This is the second butterfly he has made, and is now working on a moth! Look's like he's found yet another creative use for his stacks of local wood...and, he's still got a few treasured pieces of redwood from Humboldt County.  The wings of this butterfly are redwood with the body in koa.

The other colorful picture is of the wild raspberries Phil picks for breakfast on his morning walk. Today we drove by to scope out the location and plan to go back with our shovels to transplant some in our yard in the shady location they seem to like.

Yesterday's task was weeding the pineapple patch of nearly 40 plants  More than half of them have baby pineapples growing already with lots of our famous white pineapple. Our lime tree is loaded, in fact all but one citrus have blossoms and we have bananas maturing too.  Breakfast anyone?

Bloomers for Us Boomers!

Cotyledon Happy Young Lady

I plead ignorant of the names of all these amazing blooms that are popping up in the yard right now.

Only one plant below, with the yellow cala-shape was here when we moved in four years ago. This is the first year it has bloomed. The bloom is about 7" tall but the huge leaves are nearly 4' long!
Other specimens were gathered or gifted. The upper left chandelier-type is a succulent that over grows in an ancient cemetery along the famous Red Road in Puna -- close to the ocean. In our yard they grow in a well drained nutrient deprived area similar to that of the beach area where we gathered some, leaving appropriate ho'okupu (gifts of gratitude.)

The star-shaped pale yellow ones were gifts from a neighbor and this is their first bloom. (I have a call into the friends who gave it to us and will add the name soon.)

The pink ornamental "pineapple" one was another give-away from local jungle gardener with a warning -- the spiked leaves have the most deadly thorns; they do -- the worse of any bromeliad I have met! The entire "head" will soon be covered with small purple flowers -- that are just now becoming visible.

Over the past 4+ years my garden has become an integral extension of my home. Artfully working with and learning from the land and plants continues to be a deeply entwined relationship of ALOHA and MAHALO.

Valentine's Day

"I'm sorry, dad...we fixed it!"

It's Phil in his "new" Valentine's T-shirt....but look a little closer. We ALL love our old soft T-shirts and reluctantly they eventually end up as dust cloths and paint brush cleaners. Well, THIS T-shirt was artistically given a new life.

The CIRCLES show where the big holes WERE (note tiny paw prints>)....

Every household has a mischievous member of the family -- an inventive instigator. Such is the case at our house and "her" name is I'I Lani (the midget from heaven...or from ??)  Anyway, the other day Phil left a dirty T-shirt on the floor by the bed and guess who got it and then enticed Poko to have a rousing game of tug-of-war with it.  The result, when I found it was two jagged holes.


Phil was ready to turn the T-shirt into rags, but Poko felt so bad he decided to see if "we" could save it. He reminded me that a couple years ago I took 35 years of T-shirts apart to make myself an art-quilt. So "we" patched the holes in Phil's soft ol' shirt and then decorated it to match the motif of the original fish-and-fish-hook" art. Poko was very pleased -- and so was "dad."

Close Encounters...with SILLINESS

Sound board playing music in "Close Encounters' movie

Painting....OR...Making alien music?

...what?   Well, it is all just a bit silly, but that's a good thing, right? So, a couple nights ago, while I am deep into one of my favorite Science Fiction series (Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh) Phil decides to watch "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" movie. I don't care how many times I have seen it, the communication that takes place through MUSIC***, at the end always chokes me up.

If you ENLARGE this photo, you'll see our sign.

Today we are returning to the on-going task of dealing with the deteriorating deck paint  -- sanding and priming it for painting. You have to understand, sanding and painting a deck in Hawaii is NOT like painting a deck any place else we've lived. First you have to wait, and wait, and wait, for a brief drought and here, at 140 inches of rain annually, that isn't easy. Next you have to wait until the dew dries in the early morning. You can't paint if it is too hot or the surface is over 90 degrees -- so you also have to wait until the clouds form -- but not enough to rain.

Our rooftop message to any aliens passing over.

So, above a photo of Phil doing a touch up job with the primer. After I took this photo, the pattern seemed quite familiar -- in fact, reminiscent of the sound board from the end of the Close Encounters movie! Then I remembered the photo we sent out for the holidays this year -- with the ALOHA to ALIENS on the roof! Guess we are just a musically-alien family cuz here's another photo...of me...painting up some wood for a landscaping project that just happens to look like an alien xylophone. 'Live long and prosper!"


(If you need to refresh your memory -- here's a 2-minute musical sequence from the movie:
CLICK FOR MUSIC!

"Never underestimate the healing power of silliness and absurdity."  Steve Maraboli

Groundhog Day

Early mornings I like to take my cup of coffee outside to stroll barefooted around the back yard enjoying the delights of the garden.

Last year although we discovered the Monarch butterflies had laid many eggs on our Crown Flower plant, the hatched caterpillars all disappeared before we could witness the magical transformation (maybe eaten by birds?)

Yesterday, however, I found a solitary pupa among the munched leaves and hollered to Phil to "come see." 

He brought the camera out, and while we were standing there, we were surprised to see the thin translucent layer of the pupa "pop" open. 

And, right before our eyes, we witnessed the emergence of a brand new Monarch butterfly! The pupa (because of the diet of Crown Flower leaves) is spun green. However as the transformation occurs, it becomes more translucent.

If you look carefully at the pupa photo -- you can even see the bold stripes showing through.

We were both surprised as the butterfly emerged to think it had been cramped into such a small space.

Watching the origami-wings slowly unfurl took about five minutes. We watch while the new butterfly stretched them out to dry in the warm sun.

The final four pictures document the final stages of the process we witnessed on Groundhog Day.

NOTE: The caterpillar on the left began to "curl up" during the day -- and next morning -- we got a photo of the brand new (translucent) pale green pupa.) Of course we will be hoping to catch another emergence --- if we are lucky.

My sister died on the first of February -- not unexpectedly. Over the years, as such losses occur, we have planted something in our yard as a tribute to each person.

When Phil's mom passed a few years ago, we planted two baby ohia trees in her memory. Now, the Crown Flowers will always remind me of my sister and our shared journeys through life.

All change is loss of one kind or another; witnessing this process was a lovely metaphor and reminder of the on-going process of life -- and death -- and new life.