Landscaping by Bobcat (& Tommy, too)

"Itty-bitty" orchid of the week (and this isn't the smallest one in the yard!).
Started out with this:
Hind sight being 20-20, we would have held off on starting the construction of the house until after Tommy leveled the building site, but we assumed that the contract covering the house included that. It didn't. As people say, "This isn't Kansas any more."

And the certainly translate 'turn key home' differently, but that's another story.

Regardless, we're now working on getting the land leveled and will eventually start planting. We've been held up as we waited for Tommy and the Bobcat to have time for our project - they are the ONLY ones I'd ever trust to work in my yard, especially now that there is a house with eaves to dodge.

After 2 days of Tommy and Bobcay zipping around with loads of dirt and rock, I can honestly say that not a leaf was harmed on anything we'd planted and the house is totally intact. even though they were literally working within inches of the eaves and walls for quite a bit of the project.

Didn't even bother this bee:
& finished (except for hand work) project:

The area ...

These Ngobes live near us. Most of the ones that we've met seem like nice, honest folk. The guy on the far right, who is proudly holding the baby, is Victor, who helped Paul build some of our rock walls. Some, not all, as he became ill - he initially thought someone had cast an evil spell on him, but his main employer insisted that he go to the doctor and he was diagnosed with diabetes.
One of our orchids started blooming ... and a cute little green hummingbird loved it - as if typical, though, the bird escaped getting his photo taken, so we only captured the flower:

And this beauty is a local flower:

Electrical update, etc.

Union Fermosa has amended their '15 day' estimate --- now, we've only got '3 more months to go' .... told you that Panama has a different calendar than anywhere else in the world!

While we wait for our permanent visas to get approved and power for the house, we putter at projects and find new things in the yard like this huge, gorgeous caterpillar ... I'd be fascinated to know what this beauty morphs into:... Our latest project created such a sensation that a war raged over it... an avian war, that is. Of course it took the hummers a couple days to figure out the feeder.... I'd colored the sugar water to help them find the feeder and they found that right off, but they were so busy admiring the ruby hue that they initially didn't find the 'nectar', so Paul put a bag over the bottle and it didn't take long for the great discovery to be made ... the only problem was that this fella wasn't the only one to stake the claim:
As far as I've been able to tell, we have at least four types of hummers feuding over ownership of the feeder - the tiniest is an iridescent pale green with a red throat, then there are two medium sized ones: a bluish purple and this teal green one; then there's my favorite, a big blackish fellow that looks to be 5-6 inches from top of head to tail - he's the guy with a curved beak and also one who is hard to photograph... not that any of them are easy to get pictures of... I've decided hummingbirds are the jets of the bird kingdom (and the butterflies that live around here aren't slouches, either.)

Another 'wet' subject

Our photo of the week - another spectacular sunset over Tisingal - 5 minutes after the photo, the 'heavens openes':