In the yard...

A little over 2 weeks ago, we went to see how EvenStar was and ended up spending the week ... only a day or so of which was spent cleaning her.

Since we returned, we've taken these photos:We were welcomed by this lovely butterfly, who was only about the size of Paul's thumbnail but too skitish to be photographed with his hand:
Another lovely 'welcome home' sunset:
Some happy ferns:
Jeanne's favorite flower of the week:
Favorite orchid of the week:

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':

Playing Waiting Games

Today, we moved the antenna from the rental to the top of the new house.

Don't have much time for loads of news and figure you
don't want to hear about packing boxes, anyway. By the
end of the week, we hope to catch up with the antenna,
but still don't have a firm date for our electric
connection, so we may go sailing for a while.

Paco (the electrician pictured below) says the electric company has
passed our application for electricity and will come
out this week to review options about installing the
poles... I asked Paco if we should plan on one or two
years - he just laughed, but I was only half kidding.

Of beds & electricity ...

This is our photo of the week:




See how the clouds roll through the rain forest? We've been trying to get a photo of that for ages, but generally, by the time we realize the clouds are coming, we're in the 'fog'.

Paul commissioned Mr. Rodriquez to build a bed for our spare room - here the finished product is, when we went to pay for it at his shop:


Now, the only problem with having a queen sized bed built is getting it home. Luckily, Mr. Rodriquez knew Carlos, a taxi driver, whose taxi was a Toyota truck and judging by how quickly they got it loaded and strapped down, they've done this before:



Since our major problem was figuring out how to move our mattress to the new house, we asked the taxi driver if it was possible to drop by our rental house - he could do this in the same load! And he did .... the cost for moving both bed and mattress was $3.00.



Looks good in the guest room, doesn't it? Paul had Mr. Rodriguez build the bed 'Panama-style', which means that no box spring is needed. Believe it or not, it's very comfortable.

We're still waiting for Union Fermosa, the local electric company, to put in 1/2 kilometer of poles and install our service. The crew has optomistically built the thing we need for the electric company to hook up to. Don't ask me what it's called, but Carlos, the architect, designed it so we could use the bottom portion for our trash cans - they just haven't built the gates for it, yet, in these photos.



Union Fermosa says we'll have electricity in "15 days" ... we've heard other gringos say they were given the same time, yet one person waited 35 days, so I'm fairly certain they mean 15 'Panama days' ... Panama doesn't count time like anywhere else I've ever been - they only count Monday thru Friday (claim they count working days, but even if a place is open on Saturday, they don't count it as a work day). Furthermore, they do not count holidays. SO, when the electric company tells us "15 days" I scramble to find out if there are any holidays this month (not that I can tell), so I figure they really meant "3 weeks".