planting trees!

Today we filled the holes that GB made with the auger.

Ano from GaiaYoga nursery arrived in the afternoon with 17 trees- lychee, longon, abiu and rambutan-- all tropicals and favorites in our family.

We were fortunate to have Ra'am with us. He finished his last final of the semester, played soccer, and then came to help.
We also brought Noam and Luka, and then had the Pacheco kids, Kairos and Osiana with us too.

It was a wet day- in fact it poured on us for probably 45 minutes.... so while I had every intention of taking lots of pictures, it just wasn't the best idea.

Ra'am had to dig this hole by hand. Here he's measuring its depth.Lychee tree

Shlepping cinder in the wheelbarrow to top dress the trees is fun

Happy tree (that's calcium carbonate on top)- I think it's a longon

While we worked, Luka and Osiana vegged in the truck, with a swarm of mosquitos and a movie. Let the record show that this is typically not something we do, but Luka was exhausted and we figured it might rain.

The completed orchard


The wet farmer

The gargoyle

House Progress

Well the house is moving forward despite continual rain. It's not always completely dumping, but it's rained daily- hard at times for over a week or two (lost count already). When your house is just framed- no roof, no walls- each drop of rain is just so hard to take. The house is just dripping ALL over with water and the subfloor (t0tally exposed to the elements) is buckling in places (which Gene assures us they'll take care of).

The shed is now empty of sanding and finishing beams, and is the home of the new generator (see below)

Hole in roof

STAIRS!

More hole in roof

Too bad (or not) I didn't get shots of the massive water dripping EVERYWHERE. It's REALLY wet there. bummer

House Progress

GB and I had a little time (plus childcare) and went over to the land to check out the house and also prep for our upcoming tree planting

We were thrilled to see the beginnings of stairs! So far we (and mostly the construction guys have been climbing up on sometimes precarious ladders)

Corner beam configuration

buckled subfloor : (
There's been so much rain. We had a meeting with Gene right after seeing this. He said they've noticed it and will try to get a refund on these pieces of plywood (since it happened even before the big rains began). In any case, they'll cut out and replace any bad sections like this


Just a quick bamboo update. This is the malay dwarf bamboo that we planted back in Feb 2007.

Feb 2007

December 2007

Purple Beams

Purple beams are up!

The hole in the center of the house is a LOT smaller than I (Karen) imagined. Once the actual roof is on, it will be even smaller.