To Answer your questions

How awesome that I got some questions to answer!

Jessi asked what we planned to do as far as electricity is concerned. We are getting bids on a solar electrical system. It's going to cost us a bunch up front, but it'll pay for itself over time. We're going to have panels on the roof of our shed and the whole system will be housed there. While GB is organizing that, I'll be getting a full lesson when the time comes so that I can help troubleshoot it (since we won't be able to just call up the electric company for service!)

Erica asked about the spinach. Here, from the website of the nursery we bought it from:

Okinawan Spinach: Is it an ornamental ground cover or is it a vegetable? It's both! Okinawan spinach is a succulent vine that gets about a foot tall and sprawls around forming a thick matte of stems and leaves. They are tangy to the taste, and beautiful to the eye.

I've also heard that it's a cholesterol lowering leafy green. My experience, however is that spinaches here on the islands aren't all that yummy. If you harvest the *very* youngest leaves, they're not so bad, but otherwise they're tough and slimy. So while I'm sure we'll taste it, and use it in a pinch, I don't see us eating a whole bunch of it.

We planted it mainly for it's fast growing and matte cover for the (formerly) eroding hillside.

Waiting Patiently

So as of yesterday, we've handed our plans over to 3 different contractors for bid.

Now the wait.....

All 3 contractors were recommended to us by different people. Two of the recommendations were from acquaintances who had houses built by these guys and were very pleased. The 3rd recommendation was from our draftswoman.
The contractors were all so different. One is a large (for Hilo) company and the others are small, one-crew companies. My instinct is that a smaller company will suit us better, but we'll see. It's really important to us that we can communicate well with whomever we choose and that they are helpful with ideas and input.

So now? Wait wait wait for the bids. Apparently it takes 2-4 weeks to complete one.

Okinawan Spinach Part 2.... or how we planted to keep the hill from going bye bye

Wednesday was slated to be delivery day for the 2nd half of our okinawan spinach order.

We were very very pleased to see how well the 1st half was doing. These plants were put in the ground 5 weeks ago. They are so BIG! The weather was dry for the 1st couple of weeks of their "in ground" life, but since then we've had perfect growing weather- some rain at night and massive amounts of sunshine during the day.


We had an extra person working with us, Brian, which was a good thing. We had a lot of planting and when a toddler is involved, it's best to work in an expedient manner.

Noam was an excellent helper. He played a bunch in the truck with Luka, under the makeshift tent that GB erected.

And he did a bunch of planting too. In this picture you can see how small the new plants are (in comparison to the picture above).Ra'am also gave up his weekly trip to Starbucks with his friends to come and work. I ran out to pick him up and he was a great help once he arrived.

Nothing as good as lying under a shady tree on a sunny work day. Lunch break was awesome :)


It's easy to stick the plants in the ground, but we were working on a very steep grade. And then after they're in the ground, each plant needs water- and since we aren't hooked up with a hose yet, that means a heavy bucket.

Ahhh.... the end of the day!


In the end, we planted 288 plants this day.... for a grand total of 540 okinawan spinach plants planted.

Moving and shaking

We've had a busy week with awesome visitors, Shelley, Jodi and baby Zev!

While they were here we met with our first contractor! Elliot met us out at the land. We came prepared with a list of questions (thanks Shelley and Jodi for helping us gather them), and Elliot patiently answered them all. I was sort of feeling like a pregnant mama, interviewing her potential midwife for the 1st time- it felt that big.

He called yesterday and said he had more questions after looking things over and so he came by today to chat. It's good because it gives us a chance to hear about things that might come up, as well as think about things we hadn't thought of.

Tomorrow we meet with another contractor.

We're also receiving the last batch of Okinawan Spinach for the side of the hill. It's gonna be a huge work day. It's a lot of plants. The plants that we already planted are looking fabulous too. It's been abount 5 weeks since we planted them and the weather has really been perfect growing weather- a little rain at night and lots of sun during the day.